Zeichnung (533) aus DIE BASIS DES MAKE-UP

"Hotel Durant, Oakland 1998. Die Menschen auf den Straßen kommen mir vor wie die Modelle, die sich El Greco in der Irrenanstalt von Toledo für seine Portraits der zwölf Apostel ausgesucht hat. Alle näher zu Gott als die normalen Menschen, so sein Argument. Und alle Sitzriesen. Seltsam, wie die Mode pro Saison auch einen bestimmten Körperbau favorisiert. Hier der in der Mitte abgeknickte Körper von Johannes, dem Täufer, kopiert aus dem Gemälde Die Beerdigung des Grafen Orgaz von El Greco. An der von seinem Lendenschurz verdeckten Sollbruchstelle eine mittelalterliche, von angetriebenen Pferden ausgeführte Vierteilung eines Delinquenten. Die Tiere könnten auf die Namen Europa, Amerika, Zeichnung und Film hören. Bei Moe's an der Telegraph Avenue ein Buch zu den Bauten Pier Luigi Nervis erstanden. Die schwarzen Bildteile markieren tragende Elemente und Details der Konstruktion des Pirelli-Hochhauses in Mailand von 1958. Abends dasselbe Gebäude in der Eröffnungssequenz des Films La Notte von Antonioni wiedergesehen." (Aus: flypaper #5, 2010).

(1999) 

Drawing (534) from THE BASIS Of MAKE-UP

"Following cosmetic surgery, a woman with her nose still in bandages dreams of a man stripped to the waist among the reeds on a lakeshore. Spots of light and shadow wander across his back, an exemplary feeling of peace without either insects or invectives. Yet lotus leaves on stalks jut into the image from all four sides and the man is scared of getting caught up in the tangle of their roots while swimming. He senses that the treetops of an impenetrable forest lurk under the surface of the water. Then he’s struck with fear at the idea of leaches and snapping turtles attaching themselves to his calves. He leaps out of the water naked and shouts Fuck nature! A uniformed forest warden observes this and shakes his head. The women awakens and is happy that no contact was yet made. She only wants to start showing her face again in social networks once her corrected nose has healed. Then all opportunities will be open to her, as well as the match made in heaven prophesized by the dream." (From: arsenal, june 17)

(2005) 

Drawing (174) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"The dark phase of a solar eclipse at Lake Hambach on August 11, 1999. Two naked men in boxing gloves disappear within the long grass on the edge of the lake. A wheel gymnast from the photo book In Licht und Sonne by Kurt Reichert from the 1930s crosses the sunbathing area, as does the shadow of the low-flying Air Force One with President Clinton on board on its way from Schönefeld to Moscow. Or was it just a second Air Force One flying the same route as a distraction without the president on board? The men in the grass are startled by the noise and feel bothered by this possible doubling. Like rabbits on their hindlegs, they sniff the air to pick up the scent. Everything stinks of fumes, the space seems to solidify, a temporal anomaly begins, and a futuristic, jet-propelled, three-egged sexual organ appears in the sky like a ghost. Everyone acts as if they hadn’t seen anything, turning away silently and continuing to go about their urgent business." (From: arsenal, september 20).

(1999)

Drawing (536) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"Five pornographic sculptures from Aquitania in front of the sketch of a column base in the Cistercian Maulbronn abbey. From the Petite Grammaire de l'obscène by Christian Bougoux, who was the first to copy them and list them encyclopedically. The original site of their placement beneath the roof ridges and on the exterior walls of medieval churches appears logical: the mortal sin had to remain outside the door, but had to be taught in a vivid manner all the same. Pornography has always been self-help and a social necessity. Who else sees to the indisputably existing, excess energies? What is not allowed to be must be placarded larger-than-life to demonstrate the nothingness of the consumers and their emotions. Here, the displays protrude on bars from the stone rosettes of an archway, at the foot of which a motorcyclist had an accident. Next to it, The Resurrection of the Flesh by Luca Signorelli in the Orvieto Cathedral celebrates in an enraptured way the naked back of one of the resurrected humans." (From: Black Blocks, Cinema Scope #46, 2011).

 

(1996)

Drawing (537) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"Another traffic accident: two resurrected humans from Luca Signorelli's The Resurrection of the Flesh in the Cathedral Santa Maria in Orvieto next to a burning car wreck. One still wears the mask of a skull, while the other already looks to the ground, which he has already become. At the same time, he saucily raises his behind. Signorelli knew what flesh is good for, as a model for an individual rebuff, too. On the bars protruding from the small architectural flower rosettes, three pornographic sculptures made of stone, found in Romanic cathedrals in France from the 11th and 12th centuries. Genitals in hardcore format are the stars of this depiction. If one redeemed the church from its good intentions, it always had something to offer. In contrast, the ordinary person is obvious nothingness, whose commodity character gets stuck in his throat. In the background, the sketch of a column base in the Maulbronn abbey-nothing but grotesque faces and harmless stylizations, just softcore and not very edifying." (From: Black Blocks, Cinema Scope #46, 2011).
(1996)

Drawing (538) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"Two sections of intestine hang on sticks like swords of Damocles over a domestic setting.   I’m sitting with Sheila McLaughlin on the floor of a gray-green corridor on the 4th floor of 100 Hudson Street, NYC, around the end of 1974. This is drawn according to a photocopy by David Larcher, into which part of the seal he used back then has been etched. This snapshot is bordered to the right and left by two models that are supposed to represent nerve fibers. When we were forced to move out of the dilapidated office building, we flooded the entire floor by means of the fire department hose hanging on the wall. The twelve-story building had already been rundown and was waiting for speculators to revamp it into luxury accommodation. Years later, I was standing on the street below and looking up at what used to be my wall of windows when someone shouted down at me “It’s nice up here”, his voice full of derision. I have no idea how much damage the building subsequently suffered when the World Trade Center collapsed." (Aus: arsenal, december 15)

(1997) 

Zeichnung (539) aus DIE BASIS DES MAKE-UP

"Text under construction"

Links das Riechorgan des Menschen vor Selbstportrait im Flur von 100 Hudson Street, NYC 1974. Rechts das Riechorgan eines Rehs vor einem römischen Frutti-di-Mare-Fußbodenmosaik. Davor Birgit Knop in der Brigitte, 1996. 

(1997) 

Drawing (540) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

Sun, clouds, wind, grass, water, a staircase, a door, a window and three terraces. The view of a dream house in Nebraska hastily painted in 1978 anticipated the terraces in Nadur that would lie even closer to the clouds forty years later. The household is watched over by a Germanic man on a playing card swinging a club, who was replaced in films by James Bond and his license to kill; and he in turn in real life by self-authorized warriors of the opinion that their God is great. The niche we inhabit condemns us to be in delightful equilibrium with life and is as such emblematic of the brittle sphere of an existence suspended between heaven and earth. Manned space travel is damned to be propagandist idiocy to which a few astronauts’ lives fall victim every few years. May Elon Musk have himself shot in the direction of Mars and be celebrated so as to see himself as a wretched survivor before finally being forgotten. One would prefer to not to mention the rats that leave the ship first after having infested it.

(1978) 

Drawing (541) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"Space and a whole load of galaxies in the form of an elliptical disc being held over San Blas Bay on Gozo as viewed from the Mistra Rocks shortly before the deadly Milghuba waves make shore. The tents of a beach party in Denmark are superimposed over the scene, with a surfer friend’s silhouette appearing as a striped surfboard pattern. In 1983, he put up our two-men tent right in the midst of three large family tents. He then occupied himself with the adolescents, who were on the scene straight away. My brain was filled with a black cloud, as I read the newspaper. A couple of teenagers tried to tickle my toes. I retreated into the tent and closed the zip. My friend’s big moment: he taught the girls and boys a lesson about respecting privacy. They were impressed. Beforehand, in Hamburg, he’d used a hammer to smash the one-way mirror in the pick up spot next to the police station on the Reeperbahn. An official was seated behind it to lie in wait for the gays. A facility of Home Affairs Senator Helmut Schmidt." (From: arsenal, december 13).

(2005)

Drawing (542) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"A curtain over Nadur on Ghawdex, the second biggest island of the Maltese archipelago, moves between Europe and Africa. For a long time, the settlement on the mountain ridge remained alien and closed to me. The drawing dates back to a time when I was just quickly passing through and had no intention of staying. Only much later did it dawn on me that Nadur was like a milder form of Natur. Maybe this was a kind of foreboding: A foot ventures out of the shaky leg of a tracksuit bottom and sets itself on the rocky ground. A code knight. Four alchemist signs for death adorn his right trouser leg. On the crest of a table mountain is a vision of a house with a big terrace - the B-B-House of ARTEC in Burgenland. Home rhymes with origin just as little as future rhymes with the past. Two bars of almond chocolate form the basis of the surface structure of an interactive facade, which translates every imaginable code." (From: arsenal, march 13).

(2005)

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