ANTICIPATION AND ABSENCE
2020 | Series of 13 paintings

The Earth itself is, as we know, a heap of rubble from a past future, and humanity the thrown together, bickering community of heirs to a numinous yesteryear that needs to be constantly appropriated and recast, rejected and destroyed, ignored and suppressed so that, contrary to popular belief, it is not the future but the past that represents the true field of opportunity.
— Judith Schalansky, An Inventory of Losses (published 2020)

The series Anticipation and Absence is a visual search for traces. I find the motifs in my immediate surroundings, my studio.

The 13 pictures are painted on the pages of the book An Inventory of Losses by Judith Schalansky. The novel deals in 12 chapters with the lost, forgotten, thrown away and extinct. Each of the works is painted on the pages of one chapter (including the preface) and seeks connections to the content of this chapter by way of free association.

Through the doublings and repetitions that appear in the paintings, they arrange themselves - like a book - into a narrative and create cross-references that go beyond the individual works. This also creates a connection to the series Paintings of Paintings (especially the 13th painting of the series), which also uses the workspace as a projection surface.