The Ping-Pong Series
An initial seven-frames-on-the-wall-idea, on the gallery ship, the Arte Noah in Würzburg, turned into a steadily growing collage project which is too much fun in the making for it to end anytime soon.
My very first Ping-Pong collage consisted of numerous ping-pong balls crazily flying around in the scenery and in front of an anonymized couple which is standing in three merged layers of photos depicting the Main river right there where the gallery ship is anchored. It all started in 2020.
I am using photos and scans of my own work from the past and present, such as drawings, cut-outs, collages, paintings and sculptures. Adding segments of personal photos while having lived for many years in California, Italy and Germany, from trips to various locations, mixed in everyday observations and findings, snippets from newspaper, little things that catch my eye, video stills, hunted and found pictures on online auction sites like eBay and craigslist in different countries.
Alongside they have a visualized element of sound, be it natural or mechanical, only one or many different ones.
Each collage, considered on its own, offers an insight and at the same time an outlook into elsewhere. A journey, a vacation from the familiar for the accumulating, cutting and merging me, as well as for the viewer, without actually taking a trip.
What makes these Ping-Pongs so thrilling for me is that through them I am able to time travel and beam myself so to say without gravity through my boxes and folders of collected treasures. Playfully constructing something from the past, commenting on something from the present, envisioning something in the future. Self contained entities where one story still leads to the next and the next and so forth – no matter the timeline.