A R T I S T   S T A T E M E N T

As the basis of my artistic work serves the material ice. Ice is a fascinating material. Its crystalline structure can take on almost any shape, making it ideal for creating sculptures. In addition, in its pure form it appears completely transparent, which means that objects in the ice can be clearly visible. And, although objects in ice can be preserved for a very long time, the ice itself is very transience. This transience is what makes the material ice so special to me.

My works made of ice are not classic ice sculptures, which are carved out of the ice using a chainsaw and chisel, but temporary objects and installations that are usually context-related. The focus is often on the transience of the material. With the help of the melting process, references to content are consciously tilted and conceptual changes of perspective are deliberately made possible. In terms of content, the focus is on themes such as “animals” and “people” as well as “nature” and “environment”.

To realize my projects, I travel to different places all over the world. For example, I have sunk an aquarium made of ice into a river in Hangzhou (China), replaced a panoramic window made of glass of a wild animal enclosure in Berlin (Germany) with a pane of clear ice or built a birdcage made of ice on the Canary Island of La Palma (Spain). All these works have been realized in public space and subsequently exhibited in museums and galleries of contemporary art.

As all my works are ephemeral, I document them with photos and videos. The photos usually depict the respective work as such, while the videos focus on the melting process. For the most part, they show this in a single image section over its entire duration, without editing or time-lapse. As a result, the finished films often have a decelerated effect. In addition, the artistic interventions are sometimes very subtle, so that the ice only becomes recognizable at the second glance.

With regard to the transience of ice, my artistic work in 2024 will focus on the melting of glaciers in the context of global warming. Because the eternal ice is melting. According to a study, around 255 billion tons of ice are melting in Greenland every year. The North and South Poles are suffering considerably from climate change as well. Climate researchers assume that the arctic polar ice will have completely disappeared in the summer of 2035.