In 2002, I began drawing palm-sized groups of figures in absurd-apocalyptic states. Without preliminary sketches or a concept, contour-drawn figures emerged on paper rolls up to 10 x 30 feet in size, undergoing meandering violent excesses in black ink on white paper. From a distance, they formed an ornamental weave. Reflections defined the overall shape of infinitely declined clichés that were connected oppositely.
Since then, working simultaneously has been impossible for me. Immersing myself and focusing on only a single drawing allows me to generate momentary snapshots on a surface without creating a narrative red thread. Over time, I developed a dissatisfaction with solutions, endings, or directions, and the paper fills with monochrome and redundant content that behaves like plus and minus. The dissolution of all supposed content triggers both the play instinct and the compulsion for control. The play of building and erasing demands all concentration. Declensions of many possibilities must be visible as a whole on a sheet, but also be visible in detail at every point, so that, in observation, the surplus of information confronts the redundancy. Here, the energy in the viewer can endlessly increase— or implode, as the neutral elements in the drawing mutate into personal representations.
All depicted figures, animals, or objects exist in a charged potential with each other, causing the ornamental overall image of the drawing to completely collapse in the next moment. The size of each representation is connected to an internal compass, defined by the body, which makes the connection between brain and hand decisive. Thus, figures appear in hand-sized formats. The final overall size of the work is determined by the same parameters, but the result is shared with the choice of the largest, most meticulously produced, high-quality paper available on the market. Over several sheets and years, increasingly detailed works have emerged, none of which includes a single academic representation. In this sense, I cannot draw.
1 Aggregate and Pressure
Art is not built from layered meanings. It seemingly implodes within itself. The pressure increases until it is able to shatter the form. The conceived state is both one of construction and destruction simultaneously. In this process, works and seed cells emerge, dismantling themselves. The miracle of change: The form breaks in the moment of observation because it can only reveal its true shape in decay. The construction site of a ruin. A monochromatic drawing is a form suitable for seeing everything side by side, all at once.
2 Not Working Simultaneously
Art is not a product of linear time. It does not exist in a constant sequence but unfolds in fragments that never occur simultaneously. The act of creation and that of destruction must overlap, but not synchronously. Implosion is a state in which all parts work against themselves at once—like the collision of the Big Bang and a Black Hole. All details can be observed simultaneously, which is why large formats are suitable.
3 Repeating, Penetrating
Only the total artwork counts as a unique fugue in the canon of many. A constant repetition, copying, penetrating, and cutting plays a major role. Repetition is not merely an act of reproduction, but a force that continuously withdraws meaning. Each repetition destroys the original understanding, making room for a deeper experience of emptiness. Repetition is the sound of survival in chaos. Redundancy is a progressive act.
4 The Pressure Increases
The pressure of the world, the market, and society increases—but it cannot be endured. Art does not withstand this pressure; rather, it allows it to collapse within itself. In the implosion, the true power of art emerges: it is the silence in the storm, the destruction of the boundaries of reason, and the feeling of complete control over the uncontrollable. Hierarchy becomes increasingly diverse. As an artist, one gains authority without a powerful or financially strong backup. One criticizes in order to be criticized, one observes in order to be observed. There are fewer and fewer readers, but more and more authors on this planet, and AI does not increase the pressure.
5 Factory-like Production of Products Gives Way to Prototypes
Art production is not mass production. Art production is mass production. The implosionist relies on prototypes, which are not designed but born. They are fragments of a larger whole that will never be reached. They remain in a state of becoming, even though the product itself is part of the creation process and contributes to decisions.
6 Declination – Sol LeWitt
LeWitt spoke of the importance of the idea, not the execution. Yet even the idea itself is not understood as a static concept in the implosionism. The idea is a collapsing thought structure that is not merely designed but remains in a constant state of declination. It moves through its own forms to break itself. The end product as a fetish is both right and wrong, but the idea of transcending the material has failed in minimalism: Robert Smithson’s Hotel Palenque comes closest to the intention.
7 No Real Sacrifices
There are no real sacrifices. Everything is illusion. Art is the reflected moment of horror, without real sacrifice. Pain is the self-imposed law of implosion, but it remains in the safe space of the laboratory. The artist does not suffer, yet suffers. Over time, he becomes obsolete, or who knows the names of the cave painters from Chauvet? The entire work gains sharpness, contour, and power to detach from the artist. There, the artist meets an empty space that reignites him. An asymmetry that must have a consequence, always where there is life. Power and politics disappear, territorial behavior of humans and animals fades into oblivion. Knowledge is heaven on earth, until the end of life.
8 Carl Andre or the Affinity for Children’s Toys
Carl Andre’s art is an example of the affinity for immediacy. In implosionism, this transforms into a childish act of play that can never end. Art is the pure joy of destruction and creation in the same breath. The affinity for children’s toys means that art need not be high culture. It can also be the broken block of a quirky, free spirit, or the interpretation of the floor experience of a crawling child, serving as the foundation for an invented minimalism down to the womb.
9 Organic Time and Corresponding Space
Time in implosionism is not linear. It grows organically, shifts, collapses, and folds back in on itself again. Space is not a geometric dimension but an elastic construct that reveals its true nature in the implosion. Art does not find a fixed place; it becomes the dynamic of the space itself. Chance is the founder of a space and seeks to structure itself from there, to emerge or collapse. Time and space do not matter in jumping dimensions, but through countless perspectives of living beings, cosmic truths are condensed. The space becomes the installation of time.
10 Judge Dredd
The implosionist unites all forces within himself. No ideology is followed, and no power is yielded to. Political or moral influence is ignored. The verdict is often No. – Like a child who at least knows what it does not want. Ritual and order stabilize only to stir chaos.
11 OCD
Compulsive repetition—the obsession with precision, form, and the end product—is the breeding ground for implosionism. But it does not become a disorder, rather a creative drive that leads the artist ever deeper into chaos. OCD is not a disease, but a tool and handrail for the creation of nothingness.
12 Search and Approaching
Approaching nothingness is the goal. The answer lies in the proximity, but it disintegrates in the moment of realization before it can be fully grasped. „Michael Ende, nur du bist Schuld daran, das aus uns nichts werden kann, du hast uns mit deinen Tricks aus der Gesellschaft ausgeXt.“ (Tocotronic) Chance determines the edge of human understanding, it is quantum and belief. Finding insight or a solution beyond that is always correct.
13 The Shock of Oneself
In implosionism, the boundaries between creator and work are not clear. It is a constant shock about one’s own self, one’s own creation, one’s own existence. In this fear lies the true power of art: it confronts the artist with his own meaninglessness, only to release him in the same breath into the freedom of limitless possibilities. Humor and research develop in parallel. – Death is a joke.
14 Being Alive
The implosionist’s love is not for death, but for life. It is the moment of complete being, finding its strength in the destruction of form and structure. It is both decay and rebirth simultaneously, life in its purest, most chaotic form. The illusion of evacuating one’s own mind in the working process, at the expense of social life, produces hermits in the best sense. Keeping the mind at temperature, not giving up fun. For a gathering of such hermits would be a grand fest: united in productive conflict over the big questions.
15 Always Back to Zero – Matter and Antimatter
Implosionism reduces everything to zero. There is no elevation, no progress, no final form. Matter and antimatter are just aspects of a constant, relentless decay and buildup. Art is the possibility of nothingness – always beginning from zero, always in conflict, but art would only be another excuse for the question of where we come from and where we are going, if we don’t clearly answer it.
The implosionist denies power claims of any kind, as he lives in the pressure dynamics of singularities, like art itself. Politics and culture are not singularities, they are territorial by-products. Implosionism is a call to those who have the courage to see everything in the nothing. Art is not a form, but the moment of disappearance. Isolation is legitimate. Saying No is existential, to recognize the power of implosion as an alternative to explosion. Pressure dynamics of any kind organize forces or push them to the edge of the conception of everything, where the implosion becomes a power plant. Mannerism, Futurism, or Suprematism are absorbed by implosionism to create a new consciousness in anarchy without ideology.
A manifest paper, detail, 2025