In 2002, while still studying Fine Arts in Berlin, Ralf Ziervogel began drawing palm-sized groups of figures in absurd-apocalyptic states, following a series of performative videos. Without preliminary sketches or concepts, contoured figures emerged on sheets of paper up to 3 × 10 meters in size, depicting meandering outbursts of violence in black ink on white paper. Reflections determine the overall form of infinitely declined clichés, which are connected in opposition. Viewed from a distance, they form an ornamental network in which the visual languages of the Orient and the Occident merge.

 

Ziervogel fills the paper with monochrome, mutually negating elements that behave like plus and minus. Dissolving all apparent messages simultaneously triggers a playful impulse and a compulsion to control. Building and erasing demand full attention. The intense focus on a single drawing over an extended period creates countless snapshots in chaotic chain reactions across the surface, without generating a narrative throughline. Declinations of many possibilities become visible as a whole on one sheet but can be examined in detail at any point, revealing an overload of information confronted with redundancy when viewed up close. Here, the viewer’s energy can rise endlessly—or implode, as the neutral elements in the drawing mutate into personal representations.

 

All presented figures, animals, or objects exist both individually and in relation to each other in a charged potential that can cause the ornamental totality of the drawing to collapse at any moment. The size of each depiction is guided by an internal compass defined by the artist’s body, with the connection between brain and hand being decisive. Figures thus appear in hand-sized formats. The selection of commercially available paper rolls determines the outer dimensions. Over multiple sheets and years, works have emerged that have become ever more detailed through self-trained procedures, containing not a single academically drawn image.

 

The increasingly delicate form has taken over the production process in 20 major works and approximately 300 minor works over six years, preparing from the outset a foreseeable conclusion to the entire series.

 

Aggregate and Pressure

Art is not built from layered strata of meaning. It seemingly implodes within itself. The pressure grows until it can shatter the form. The conceived state of matter is simultaneously that of creation and destruction. In this process, works and seeds emerge that decompose themselves. The miracle of transformation: the form breaks in the moment of observation, because it can only reveal its true shape through decay. The construction site of a ruin. A monochrome drawing is suitable as a form to see everything side by side, all at once.

 

Do Not Work 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 acts of creation and destruction must overlap, but not in sync. Implosion is a state in which all parts simultaneously work against themselves—like the collision of the Big Bang and a black hole. Every detail can be perceived at once, making large-scale formats appropriate.

 

Repeat, Penetrate

Only the Gesamtkunstwerk counts, as a unique fugue within a canon of many. Constant repetition, copying, penetration, and cutting play a major role. Repetition is not merely an act of reproduction but a force that continually strips meaning anew. Each repetition destroys the original understanding and creates space for a deeper experience of emptiness. Repetition is the sound of a work surviving amid chaos. Redundancy is a progressive act.

 

Pressure Rises

The pressure of the world, the market, society rises—but it is unbearable. Art does not endure this pressure; it lets it collapse within itself. In implosion, the true power of art emerges: it is the silence in the storm, the destruction of mental boundaries, and the feeling of total control over the uncontrollable. Hierarchy becomes ever more diverse. The artist gains authority without a powerful or wealthy backup. One critiques to be critiqued, observes to be observed. Readers dwindle, authors multiply, and AI does not reduce the pressure.

 

From Factory Production to Prototypes

Art production is not mass-produced. Art production is mass-produced. Artists rely on prototypes that are not designed but born. They are fragments of a greater whole that is never reached. They remain in a state of becoming, even as the product itself participates in the process and contributes to decisions.

 

Declension of Sol LeWitt

LeWitt spoke of the primacy of the idea over execution. Yet the idea itself need not be a static concept. The idea is a decaying edifice of thought, constantly in a state of declension. It traverses its own forms to break itself. The finished product as fetish may be right or wrong, but the idea’s overcoming of the material failed in minimalism: Robert Smithson’s Hotel Palenque comes closest to the intent.

 

No Real Sacrifices

There are no sacrifices. Everything is illusion. Art is the reflected moment of horror, without real victims. Pain is the self-imposed law of implosion, yet it remains in the safe space of the laboratory. The artist does not suffer, and yet does. They become obsolete over time—who remembers the names of the Chauvet cave painters? The Gesamtkunstwerk gains clarity, contour, and strength to detach from the artist. Here, the artist encounters a void that reignites them. An asymmetry demanding action wherever life exists. Power and politics fade, human and animal territoriality is forgotten. Knowledge is heaven on Earth, until the end of life.

 

Carl Andre and the Affinity for Toys

Carl Andre’s art exemplifies an inclination toward immediacy. Everything returns to a childlike act of play, endlessly. Art is pure joy in simultaneous creation and destruction. The toy-like tendency shows that art need not be high culture. It can be the broken building block of a quirky, free mind, or the interpretation of a crawling child’s floor experience, giving rise to a self-invented minimalism reaching back to the womb.

 

Organic Time and Corresponding Space

Time is not linear. It grows organically, shifts, collapses, and folds back on itself repeatedly. Space is not a geometric measure but an elastic construct, revealing its true nature in implosion. Art finds no fixed place but becomes the dynamics of space itself. Chance is the founder of space, seeking structural emergence or decay. Time and space matter little in dimension-hopping, but countless perspectives of living beings condense cosmic truths. Space becomes the installation of time.

 

Judge Dredd

Humans embody all powers. They follow no ideology, resist all authority. Political or moral influence is ignored. The verdict is often No—like a child at least aware of what it does not want. Ritual and order stabilize only to incite chaos.

 

OCD

Compulsive repetition—the obsession with precision, form, and final product—is the fertile ground of implosion. Yet it does not become a disorder but a creative driver, plunging the artist deeper into chaos. OCD is not illness but a tool and scaffolding for creating nothingness.

 

Seeking and Approaching

Approaching nothingness is the goal. Proximity holds the answer, yet it disintegrates at the moment of recognition, 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 marks the edge of human understanding—it is both quantum and faith. Any insight beyond this is valid.

 

Frightened by Oneself

The boundaries between creator and work blur. There is a constant shock at one’s own self, creation, and existence. In this fear lies art’s true power: it confronts the artist with their own insignificance, only to release them into the freedom of infinite possibility. Humor and research evolve in parallel—the death is a joke.

 

Being Alive

Human love is not death but life. It is the moment of complete being, finding strength in the destruction of form and structure. It is decay and renewal, life in its purest, most chaotic form. The illusion of evacuating one’s mind through work, at the cost of social life, produces hermits in the best sense. Keep the mind warm, without giving up fun. A gathering of such hermits would be a magnificent feast: united in productive dispute over the great questions.

 

Resetting to Zero—Matter and Antimatter

Implosion reduces everything to zero. There is no ascent, no progress, no final form. Matter and antimatter are merely aspects of continuous decay and creation. Art is the possibility of nothing—repeatedly starting from zero, always in conflict. Yet art would be just another excuse to question where we come from and where we are going, if these questions remain unanswered.

Human beings reject any claims to power, because they exist within the pressure relations of singularities, such as art. Politics and culture are not singularities; they are territorially contested by-products. Implosion is a call to those who have the courage to see in nothingness that which contains everything. Art is not a form but the moment of disappearance. Isolation is legitimate. Saying no is existential, in order to recognize the power of implosion as an alternative to explosion.

 

Pressure relations of all kinds organize forces or push them to the edge of the conception of everything; there, implosion becomes a powerhouse. Mannerism, Futurism, or Suprematism are absorbed in the creation of a new consciousness within anarchy without ideology.