Dear Alessandra, thank you for your time and your interest. I’m doing well, considering the circumstances–the world is falling apart, isn’t it? And right now I’m in Mexico City and we’re setting up my exhibition. Where do I even start with this story?! Of course, everything always influences me somehow. Sometimes it hits me straight in my heart, sometimes I just observe, sometimes I want to shape the things around me. Mexico City was perhaps the most intense and difficult time in my young adult life. I look back on the time I worked here with one laughing and one crying eye.
Why? I have the feeling Mexico City is a kind of “harbinger” of the apocalypse. It is at the same time dreamily beautiful and full of absolutely harsh and brutal history. I observe this grotesque simultaneity here and in many situations. I surround myself with white, wealthy, and educated people here in this art bubble, and yet the reality looks very different for the majority of the population here. It’s as if capitalism made the one and only new rules, and somehow you’re suddenly right in the middle of it. I had a really hard time observing and living that. Even more difficult was trying to work through this realization with my art, and suddenly I started questioning my whole persona, the relevance of my works, and the necessity of my perspective on things.
But hey, I’ve really only seen and understood a fraction of this city. Actually, I have no damn idea–I’m just really grateful to be able to do this exhibition here with these people (thank you Pequod Co.).
Thank you so much. Tomorrow’s the opening, and I’m honestly super excited. The title of the two exhibitions might be my response to the spirit of the times?! I’ve been noticing how “ultra-contemporary art” is increasingly tangled up in elaborate research, overcomplicated concepts, and fewer and fewer formal or aesthetic decisions. Why that is, I can only guess… To seem cool? To appear intellectual? To stand out or above somehow? No idea. And honestly, I don’t care.
But I’ve realized that right now, with all the tyrants in power, with these wars, and with peace slowly disappearing, what I actually want is to reach people?! Even if that sounds fucking pathetic or cheesy, I believe in art that includes all people. More than I did ten years ago, when the world was maybe different. For me, it is about creating access. About making it so, no high school diploma or fucking PhD is needed to experience art. You know what I mean?
Times are shit–what helps me? Friendship, love, good songs, vulnerability, closeness, stories, courage, right?
And "Pinturas para perros" (Paintings for Dogs) was, especially here in Mexico, the most inclusive thing I could come up with. “Durchhalten galore!” (which kind of means “perseverance galore!”) is like a call to action? Not just to endure, but to get through it, and with full force, together. I don’t know, I also think it sounds kinda dumb, but sometimes dumb is exactly right.
And yes, both exhibitions–in Mexico City and in Munich–will be deeply connected, and you’ll be able to feel and see that.
After a studio visit with Mariana Munguía Matute in Mexico City, I was finally able to start working–thanks to her. I don’t even remember exactly why. But it was something like: oh boy, don’t even try to answer all those questions. Just fuck it. And that’s how I started. In a way I never had before. In Berlin, when I work in my studio (even painting), it always starts at the drawing board. There’s research, digging through archives, sketching, building models on the computer… And eventually, I paint.
Why? Because I always wanted to be as smart as the others. And because I never wanted to be exposed as the guy who, at 25, didn’t even know what a biennale was. So all that intellectual crap came with it.
But in Mexico, none of that was there. No archive. No computer. No research. Nothing. Just me and the studio, 40 minutes outside the city, no “real” social life, no distractions. Sounds like I’m whining and maybe I am a little, but it really was super lonely and tough. And then I just started painting the tree I sat under every morning with Julio, the local street security guy, while we had coffee. I painted leaves and the sky. I saw roots and wanted to paint them.
I saw garbage, ads and everything all over the city–and wanted to paint that too. Just like that. And it really annoyed me. I was (and still am) super unsure, I almost couldn’t stand just smearing oil paint on canvases.
But now, months later, I’m so grateful. All these “ugly paintings” mean so much to me. I find them weird and raw and approachable and real, more than most of my past works. I don’t know if that’s good, and I have no clue what’s next… But I wanted to share that feeling in Munich at Sperling too. And I think I did it. I feel super insecure, but also really ready to let these works go.
That's an interesting point. I’ve also thought about it a lot. Because beauty is not always the same as beauty. With the working title “the ugly paintings” I think I meant much more the process. It is a painting that shows as much painting as I have never shown before. I don't think I've ever made a painting purely for the sake of fun or emotion, until this one. Everything was always planned, researched, arranged, taken from the archives and so on. Not here. Not in Mexico.
And this unfamiliar process, the different, was also painful and I didn't like myself while I was doing it. Maybe that’s why I said "ugly"?! But now, after all this time and after setting up the exhibition, I have of course discovered an absolute beauty in it. Perhaps a new beauty. Beauty as a synonym for courage. Or beauty as a paraphrase of simplicity or clarity. Or the beauty of closeness or approachability. I think that’s what I'm thinking right now. Maybe not tomorrow. But right now on April 12, 2025, here in my hotel room in Mexico City, yes.
Yes, the experience definitely changed me in a lasting way. I believe this whole bundle of experiences–whether in research, “skills,” thinking, seeing, observing, exchanging, receiving critique, developing concepts, somehow always stays with me. It’s always there, accompanying me in my work. But that doesn’t mean I always have to follow it or show it, does that make sense?
The works I did for Sperling in Munich now, for example, are very different from those I made for Pequod Co. in Mexico City. Although the two exhibitions belong very closely together. Again, I felt this extreme sense of uncertainty, I had absolutely no idea what was happening. Then the elections were happening in Germany, and somehow everything in the studio just exploded around me and in my head.
Conversations with Johannes Sperling, Patrizia Dander, Misal Adnan Yildiz or Kerstin Brätsch in the studio were really grounding and absolutely necessary in order not to lose the thread. It became clear to me that no matter what I do or where I work, there’s always something inside me I can rely on. And what does that even mean? There are structures I need, but there are also times when I push beyond those structures. And no matter what comes out of that, somehow, it’s okay. Munich is going to be intense, too. I’m really curious and excited.
Uff, tough question. I think the answer is yes?! Of course “the personal” is a part of it. I wouldn’t know how else to make decisions. Or rather, I’ve never understood how it could be any other way. My work does not draw from autobiographical sources, yet my decisions are neither collective nor democratic, they are inherently personal. However, this personal dimension is not about self-display, but rather serves as a subtle invitation into the work itself. I simply can’t do it any other way. Even the objet trouvé is a personally selected object from billions of objects in the world, right?
I’ve become cautious about the terms gesture and layout when it comes to my work. Perhaps because they’re often the first associations the onlooker makes. For me, they are not central concepts but rather tools, temporary, functional, and ultimately subordinate to the process. With the exception of the recent time in Mexico City, my practice draws almost exclusively from my archive.
This archive is multifaceted:
– film stills and screenshots ranging from 1960s Hollywood to obscure indie productions – Berlin newspapers from the 1970s to today
– subcultural references, music and literature
– stickers, napkins, found notes
– secondhand clothing
– photographs (found, purchased, or taken by me)
– and my personal drawing journal
I collect nearly everything. Each new series begins with a constellation of these elements. What may appear to be layout or gesture is in fact grounded in fragments, details extracted from the archive. The process usually starts in my mind, then moves through acts of selection, juxtaposition, and, eventually translation into painting or sculpture.
So while the formal language of gesture or composition might be present, it is only ever a means–it is only ever a way in, not the core. A scaffold, for me, or perhaps for the viewer. I strongly believe that these seemingly trivial references, the sharp edges of a meme, the recognizability of a headline, a “postcard moment” we all share, serve as entry points.
These moments open up the work, make it accessible. But once inside, the tone may shift. Triviality can tilt toward something darker, more dystopian, deconstructive, or it may remain just what it is: a surface. The depth of the encounter is entirely up to the viewer. How far do you want to go? Right?
Buy butter, bread and cheese. Collecting the Kids from Kindergarten, paying taxes, sowing seeds and looking for eggs. Or perhaps not giving a platform to right-wing populist newspapers or parties? Or just having a physical experience, feeling love, questioning yourself, being critical, receiving happiness, allowing grief, not taking people too seriously, not taking yourself too seriously, understanding the world and your life as finite, understanding that exclusivity leads to exclusion and exclusion leads to frustration, dismantling discrimination, fighting classism and redistributing money & prosperity? Or fuck all of it and everything and just stare? I don’t know.
