flatscreen I / Library
OPEN Galerie, Frankfurt/Main, 2012
Wood; Off-white synthetic resin varnish; Scans; Adhesive tape

Over a period of six months, six hundred fictional book titles are created. The words, mostly sentences, play with the language, creating dearing bold combinations, neologisms, distortions, and poetic moments. Book title 344, for example, explores Dizzying Heights in Depths; title 239 reveals Additional Confessions. 105 provokes a stumble into uncharted territory of neuroses, with its title On Casual Neuroses. The fictional book titles emerge at a rapid pace. The stars are aligned - they occur about 3.33 times a day, on average. Drawing on autobiographical material, the constructions quickly transcend the personal sphere and open up to all viewers. Title 45, for example, reflects a turning point in every life when it states: Rotations, Since Then.

flatscreen I is a collection, an accumulation of language in its shortest form. Minimized to the book title and reduced to the narrow strip of the books´  spine, it conveys a kind of flatscreen or screen-like character. Within this fictional library, we find ourselves in the sphere of the non-haptic and the intangible. Through the two-dimensionality of the work, which sacrifices the heavy material body of the books and their shelves - language itself, the word, takes the center stage.

flatscreen II / Video
Wood; Black synthetic resin varnish; Scans; Adhesive tape

A video collection consisting of approximately 600 VHS tapes I inherited from my father in the year 2000 forms the basis for flatscreen II. The collection roughly spans the period from the from the mid-1970s to 2000. It consists primarily of copies of mainstream American films across nearly every genre. A system of handwritten color-coded film titles and a numerical code, design the labels on the VHS tapes. They reflect a part of film history in American language. Intriguingly constructed phrases can be read, such as Faithfully Yours (1984), True Lies (1994), or Six Degrees of Separation (1993). flatscreen II also comes without its heavy physical form. In this archive, too, the viewer is unable to physically interact with anything. Only within one's own memory and through a subjective chain of associations is a cinematic journey conceivable. Unlike the fictional library in flatscreen I, this collection represents a collective cinematic memory that is shared by many.

The convergence of these two written works also marks the artistic collaboration between two collectors - father and daughter. Seven years later, in 2019, the video collection once again served as the basis for further works in American Home. 

Open Gallery opening night / Making-of / studio