HAUTGÄNGER

HAUTGÄNGER is a self-portrait conceived as a permeable body.
 
Two disassembled inflatable figures are cut apart and hand-stitched into a new artificial skin. Across its flesh-toned surface, an almost monochrome world of black and white unfolds: a painter stands before his easel, enclosed within a monumental eye. Around him, beings, bodies, grimaces, architectural forms and sexual imagery emerge alongside scenes of ascent, collapse, decay and renewal.
 
Yet the visible surface is only one layer.
 
The reverse of the work is fully painted in the colors associated with different soul lineages, while remaining hidden from direct view. Only when the integrated lighting is activated do these colors begin to penetrate the surface through seams, valves and translucent areas. What appears as skin by day becomes a membrane by night.
 
Seen up close, the work dissolves into hundreds of parallel micro-narratives. From a greater distance, those same fragments begin to merge into new faces — until the artist himself eventually reappears within the image.
 
HAUTGÄNGER does not ask who a person is, but what passes through them.