Artist Statement

 

My fundamental drive has always been to transform the memories of the human heart’s Inconsolable

Longing to Belong into images. The key ingredient of my fascination is that this longing—never

fulfilled—is in itself sweeter than the fulfillment of any other human desire despite the fierce downside;

the unavoidable void, the darkness and hopelessness that one cannot escape.

 

As a human being there is inevitably a need to connect to another person, a group, a society; a need to

find a place to function. And if you find your place and thrive you are accepted, gain appreciation and

love and build a family. I am the outsider who looks at all this behavior and this human social

‘simplicity’ and therefore I don’t belong.

 

I observe you, the world, from a distance, filter and reflect my thoughts till I capture my subjective

experience in Still Images. I capture how I perceive the relationship between me and you in order to

belong. And transformed, I give it back to you; to see yourself through my designed world; to find

resonance.

 

For instance, in the evening you put your broken chair on the street with a little pain in your heart. It

served you well all those years. The next morning when you leave your house, the chair is standing next

to your front door, repaired and like new.

 

Like Lynch, I like to play with the inexplicable. I am inspired by what looks normal on the outside, but

what is beyond the polish. I like to believe that behind this mass fake appearance and accepted sets of

behavior is dysfunctionality and paranoia, jealousy and eagerness; that a person’s worst nightmare is

actually what they try to suppress. I will hold up that mirror for you.

 

Therefore, I create images from observations which become the connective tissue between me and my

audience. I create stories out of observations that express the incongruity between me and the world, that

are aesthetically placed in a different light by changing the original load/timbre, content, color and the

emotional charge inside the different frames I construct. Events from normal, daily routines are thus

deformed in a surrealistic and sarcastic way that stirs the viewer while at the same time becoming a tool with

which they emancipate themselves. The theme often deals with the notions of grief and fatalism, but brought

back into the transformed idea that is numbed of its own emotion.

 

My training as a choreographer colors my artistic tools. The camera work, the movement of the DOP

and the framing is choreographed. I work site specific and construct the set designs myself. I create scenes

with actors by improvisation. Film sound is also extremely important to me as it allows me to impart even

more information about worlds the audience cannot capture.

I developed myself as a filmmaker because film is the ultimate medium with which I can show my

internal world and to precisely stage my perceived reality; to light and capture the world and transform

my dreamscapes and surrealistic realities into work where the viewer can relate to.

 

Because I place myself in society through art, I have a need to relate through mediation; the image is what

connects us. I capture memories in still images. The mind and emotions can become engaged by looking at

a still image, and small stories can grow into huge stories. It depends, of course, on the viewer.

 

Here lies the fascinating paradox; the less personal I am in my work, the more personal it is for the viewer to

watch. More likely is that they are touched by something that I show when that resonates with something inside them.

When they can relate to it. The most shocking incidents feel like a lie rather then the truth. So I lie to tell the truth.

The more they relate to the story, the more I exist.