in the basement, there's

a reunification of

two images I made in 2004,

Ostgut Freischwimmer rechts and Ostgut Freischwimmer links,

...

which I originally

created

for

the Club Berghain,

Panorama Bar in Berlin,

where they hung over the dancefloor for five years,

and the

Kunstmuseum Basel has acquired Ostgut Freischwimmer rechts

already several years ago

and now two years ago

the Fondation Beyeler acquired

the left one, and that's how they came together again

and can be seen together again for the first time.

I see both as individual works, they can easily stand

on their own,

so one doesn't need to see the other, but it's somehow nice to see

them both together again

and

they are

part of a kind of

images I create since around 2000

that are made in

the darkroom on photo paper.

So the name Freischwimmer, which suggests liquids, chemicals,

or similar things,

the name

doesn't relate to

fluids, which are used in the production

...

in the making

...

These are images

that I create with my hands

and with tools that emit light

...

whereas in the upper room,

in room 8 on the ground floor, there you can see images

from the series Silver,

that I call rather

mechanical images.

I work on these also since

1998

and

they emerge

actually

as a depiction of the process itself.

That is, the photo chemistry, is depicted here, the Silver is a reference

to the core of the miracle, which

photography is.

But these images don't illustrate anything else

but there own development process.

Chemicals that are used

in it

that accumulate if one doesn't clean the machines

and the tanks.

The result are

these

rhythmic sediments, on the

paper. So there are actually

two kinds of totally contrary types of abstraction I work with

and

here in this room 20

I was invited

to add additional

pictures from the

collection of the Fondation Beyeler

and the

problem is that the collection is so fantastic

that it has to, that it could look

always somehow presumptuous

that

one relates oneself

to the the masters

of Modern Art.

I found the invitation

exciting and had the chance

to chose two Matisse, which are

in a similar landscape format, the Max Ernst,

which,

regarding the format,

is in dialog with

my pictures, and it was interesting

that

in the end

I didn't

chose

no other

complete abstract pictures,

because

they are

...

...

although the Matisse

stands on the edge of

complete abstraction, but there is still

an obvious relation to reality,

and I believe

also the two Picasso portraits

go very well together with

the suggestion of reality in my Freischwimmer pictures,

because the eye understands them as photographic in a way

and for the brain, photographic means, to have something

to do with reality.

And this

creates

a nice level of excitement

that there's nothing figurative

is depicted,

but the eye

recognizes reality

and I use this

the desire of the eye, to see reality

in images that the eye recognizes as photographic.

...

This is what I use

and

this is why these pictures

are actually possible,

only because they are not

painted. So for me these

above all pictures,

and the reason why the work,

is because they are photographic, so I

had to choose photography as medium

because I believe they would work differently, if they were painted.

What does it mean for you to be represented in the Beyeler Collection?

Obviously, it's a

very special collection, because

it has been

put together by a

connoisseur with absolute sureness of taste.

To be invited is of course something very special

so I was very happy about it, and it's also an extension,

I think, for the collection, because

they are the first pictures that have

a purely photographic background.

The Foundation has,...

probably my pictures are equally

made with camera and without camera. So there's

motives such as Anders (Brighton Arcimboldo) or

Affinity, In Flight Astro

and others that are made with the camera

that have all

something to do

in one way or the other

with seeing, discovering,

recognizing

and

...

the

limites of visibility and the depictable,

especially in the

three astronomical

pictures,

the ones with the astronomical background

Munuwata Sky und Transit of Venus

und In Flight Astro.

In a certain way,

all of my

works are

studies

of cause and effect

that means

what happens

when I do something, what are the effects,

whether they are technical,

photographical,

with the medium, or also

psychological, in relation to the motif

the depicted, or not depicted -

without conceiving it in advance as a program

there's different perspectives that come together

in such rooms

and that's

somehow

the arch that spans from the Buenos Aires picture with

the drain pipe

that runs in the gully,

if you point your eye

to the edge of the watercourse,

there are strange

little dots,

which somehow have a

presence that

one would have never

be able to see

with the naked eye, which can never

be reproduced,

which

somehow cross the bridge to the

image with the sun

where the little dot, the black dot,

is Venus that ran between

Sun and Earth,

so,

the very tangible and the completely ephemeral

and the points of conctact

in the pictures as in life,

that's a little bit

the context

that I see.