- Year: 2019
- Medium: Acrylic on heavy-weight watercolor paper
- 33 × 50 cm
A figure lies in glowing red against a cobalt blue background: naked, young, defenseless. She is
surrounded by a dense, almost overwhelming mass of de-individualized
Bodies. Silhouettes and oversized hands – grasping or frozen in horror –
They frame the scene. The only reclining figure appears like a newcomer.
in a ceremonial circle: fresh meat, an alien energy source, a
Object of desire.
What initially appears to be an initiation – a symbolic admission into a
a socially ostracized community, yet one desired by the individual concerned
—reveals itself as a possible attack. The oversized beings stare, transfixed—
Not out of empathy, but out of greed, fascination, and sexual hunger. It is
a moment of charged ambivalence: between contact and loss of control,
between attraction and threat, between connection and contagion.
Spread / Contagion addresses the fear of losing control: before
Appropriation by a collective, in the face of the unpredictability of sexual
Desire, before being at someone's mercy. The work touches on social issues.
such as HIV, sexualized power relations and group dynamics – but also
intimate questions about purity, vulnerability and the dialectic of touch,
physical exchange and danger.
The scene is ritually charged – a collective choreography in which boundaries
blurring: between voluntary surrender and structural overpowering,
between longing and projection, between reality and transgression. The
Oversized hands symbolize both protection and appropriation – they
symbolize power relations, collective guilt, and the unspoken.
that nevertheless remains noticeable.
The image speaks of a lack of boundaries and dehumanization, but also of profound...
A longing for belonging – and the fear of dissolving into it.
confronted with socially and individually shaped ideas of
Purity and danger, intimacy and threat, body and collective. The
expressive contrasts between cool blue and glowing red – a color,
which stands for blood, danger and the dim light in darkrooms – as well as
between light and darkness, they intensify the emotional tension. The bodies
They remain deliberately blurred – shadowy beings between reality and projection.
This work is part of a triptych, together with Connection / Connection
and conviction – three states in the tension between
Proximity and distance, identity and dissolution, self-protection and contact.
