More than 30 years ago I started out with paintovers. I used books or catalogues of other artists and converted them into my private everyday life workbooks, they got a new coinage. I appropriated them, gave them a more personal identity, with my diary registrations, notes, drafts, addresses and collages, they became art objects.
Several times friend and collector Carl Vogel (unfortunately he died too early) wanted to buy my workbooks. I rejected, the books had a too much personal meaning to me, just to be sold away. This issue inspired me to realize a specific format, based on my workbooks, which I called “dictionary”.
A series of thirteen, 1.5 meter large photo works for Carl Vogel. These photos were based on my workbooks, which I reprocessed into pictures. This method later led me from personalized workbooks, paintovers, to restructuring posters, pictures, graphics and collages.During my stay in China in summer, 2010 I was working on several Chinese books. This is how I created several dozen graphic and picturesque paintovers. The exhibition shows some repainted pictures of classical Chinese ink painting.
