Artist Statement

As a painter, I work by doing. My practice is rooted in experimentation and desire to navigate into the unknown. Painting, for me, is a layered process that unfolds over time, through intuition and constant revision. I see the artist as an iconoclast building and destroying his own work in an endless process. Each painting emerges from this tension between construction and erasure, where decisions are guided less by logic and more by instinct. My process carries an oneiric touch, images, colors and forms appear the way they do in dreams: fragmented and unresolved. Color choice is essential to my work, not as a rational system but as a lived experience. It holds weight and presence, operating on an almost metaphysical level. For me, it is important that a kind of “kidnapping” happens, a moment in which the painting takes the viewer somewhere else. Another place, another state of perception, even if only for a few seconds. The work is not meant to explain itself, but to suspend time briefly and to open a different way of seeing. The paintings are not representations, but experiences where form, color, and gesture invite the viewer to an open dialogue. By Mathias Herkenhoff