ARTIST STATEMENT

In my work, I explore the tension between inner unrest and external stillness—between a body that withdraws and a body that allows space. The work originates from a continuous state of mental activity: an ongoing flow of thoughts, expectations, and stimuli that resists being silenced. From this condition emerges an urgent search for rest, not as a luxury, but as a necessity.

This pressure manifests itself as limitation. Under the influence of social expectations, responsibilities, and the constant presence of others, the body tenses, turns inward, and resists. In my images, this state appears as closure, darkness, and protection. Rest is not absent because it does not exist, but because it cannot be accessed.

At the same time, I deliberately employ reduction. By constructing my images to be as minimal as possible, I attempt to create space for rest—a space that, however, is never fully attained. This tension between intention and inaccessibility forms a central element of the work.

I construct conditions in which rest might become possible. By systematically eliminating chaos, excess, and visual noise, I create minimal compositions in which emptiness, stillness, and bodily presence are central. The absence of others and the choice for isolation are crucial here: being alone does not signify loneliness, but becomes a necessary condition for making space—for rest, and with it, for vulnerability.

In contrast to states of pressure, I present images of stillness and slowness. Through the reduction of visual stimuli, perception decelerates, allowing the body to relax and renegotiate its relationship to its surroundings. Within this stillness, vulnerability can emerge—not as a fixed subject, but as something that becomes visible when tension subsides.

Where rest is often sought in temporary forms of escape—such as travel, sleep, or distraction—my work positions itself as a more fundamental inquiry. Rather than interrupting chaos, it seeks to actively remove it.

My work moves between these poles—pressure and stillness, withdrawal and openness. It invites the viewer not only to observe this shift, but to experience it physically and mentally. By visualizing rest, I investigate to what extent it can truly be allowed. Looking thus becomes a possible entry point into an experience of stillness.