ICH HAB DICH LIEB

ICH HAB DICH LIEB, 2026
 
The work begins with stories that have almost disappeared within the finished image.
 
Incarnations, archetypal roles and recurring connections were first inscribed into the surface in fine white lines. Wanderers, transitions, water, sacrifice, siblinghood, orientation and memory form a hidden underlying layer.
 
But the work does not illustrate these stories.
It paints over them.
Memory becomes structure.
 
Six layered cardboard panels create a physical topography of boundaries, overlaps and transitions. The construction remains visible. Surfaces meet and divide, while lines, beings, water and bodies move across their borders.
 
A monumental male presence stretches through the entire image.
He is both body and landscape.
 
Face, chest, abdomen and shoulders appear, dissolve again and merge into other forms. Partially glossed surfaces allow the figure to emerge more strongly in certain light, only to recede again into its surroundings.
 
Presence becomes fluid.
Seeing becomes dependent on position.
 
The work is anchored by two dominant color fields.
Green represents grounding, stability, growth and the strength of a person capable of providing support.
Pink opens another possibility: freedom, desire, vulnerability, excess and everything that might become visible when strength no longer has to mean permanent responsibility.
 
Yet these poles do not remain separate.
Beings move between them.
Colors change state.
 
Water rises.
Bodies open.
Sexual forms meet childlike eyes, manga-inspired figures, organs, grimaces, hearts and absurd little creatures.
 
Nothing is entirely sacred.
Nothing entirely grotesque.
Spirituality has a body here.
And the body has a sense of humor.
 
Almost everything within the work is capable of seeing.
Large eyes, tiny dots and incidental faces populate the surface until the clear separation between the observing human and the observed object begins to dissolve.
 
The viewer searches for figures.
But the figures seem to look back.
In this way, ICH HAB DICH LIEB expands the central question of WHO IS PAINTING WHOM?
 
Not only:
Who is painting whom?
But also:
Who is seeing whom?
 
And how much of another person can ever truly be seen?
 
Perhaps this is where the most intimate idea of the work lies.
Love here does not mean fully decoding another person.
Nor does it mean resolving their darkness for them.
 
It accepts that there are rooms that belong only to the other.
 
That protection can cast shadows.
That strength does not exclude wounds.
That a person can be both anchor and chaos, tree and wanderer, body and memory.
 
The title refuses any grand metaphysical statement.
It simply says:
 
ICH HAB DICH LIEB.
Perhaps that is enough.