Night Lights — a new phenomenon.
In 2015 I introduced a new type of light in my work. It is not direct sunlight, filtered daylight or artificial light that now exposes the visible parts of reality — these are sources I examined in depth before — but ‘night light’ that results from lightning, a specific variant called ‘sheet lightning’, which strikes under certain atmospheric conditions on summer nights or at dusk and bounces off clouds and the heavens to create what looks like a diffuse backlighting effect. The electrical natural discharge, the unexpected light—these confront us all of a sudden with nature itself. At the same time, the digital video pixilation of the iPhone arrests the images somewhere between reality and abstraction, between a photo-technical state and a painterly atmosphere.

About earlier Videowatercolors The name conjures up the image of two mediums that are apart in effect and time yet have the flow of the image in common. I executed these works on archival silk baryte, encausted in epoxy that was matted by hand to produce a deep clarity and saturation of colors. I thus took advantage of the visual possibilities offered by the digitally produced imagery. Flatness meets depth, grey proves to be full of color, the unrecognizable becomes recognizable, and out-of-focus effects exist right up against razor-sharp edges. Light and Perception, perhaps my main tools, are omnipresent.

In Moving IV of 2002, which at first sight has something sensual about it, evoking a blown-up image of lips, we actually see a red seat, videoed on a train. The light shifts with the movement of the train and time, the pliable skin of the seat invoking the presence of travelers.

Moving II of 2002 consists of three parts, of which the bottom two are recognizably of undulating water. The top layer, however, appears strange, as though our view across the water is interrupted by rocks or an iceberg— until we tilt our head to the left and recognize that our sight is conditioned.

Skyscape (Blue Horizon) of 2003 looks like a landscape, but in reality consists of two Videograbs from a long shot taken with a video camera held still against an airplane window. Dark clouds announce themselves in the top image and form, a little while later, a thick blanket of clouds below. In reality, there is no horizon and we are looking at different manifestations of H2O, including the ice crystals that have formed on the window, engaging in a kind of digital dance with the pixels of the flowing image.