The medium of drawing serves as the point of departure in my work as a very direct and spontaneous way to express my thoughts. Depending on the project, I rework sketches on the computer or utilize them in collages, translate drawings into prints or develop them further with needle and thread.

The chosen images are samples of a project I follow since a few years. Under the title ‘Hypnos’, the God of Sleep I bring together works that have come about as the result of a long examination of the theme sleep and death, Hypnos and Thanatos, the twin brothers from Greek mythology. My search for traces has taken me to a sleep lab and led to encounters with numerous scientists for whom sleep still remains a phenomenon, despite the many findings on the subject and the discovery of new research methods. In addition to these facets from the natural sciences, aspects from the humanities, cultural history, literature and sociology also come into play in shaping the foundations for this works of art.

Although sleep is a fundamental life process, the relationship to this state of consciousness has always been marked by ambivalence, a border zone that is too enigmatic and unfathomable. The exploration of death, sleep’s brother is thus a logical consequence, as the loss of clear consciousness and self-control that occur as we slip off into sleep bear considerable similarities to the moment of death when the soul separates from the body. In both cases, the individual crosses a threshold and yields to an inscrutable, mysterious darkness.

This condition of being suspended in which individuals are stripped of their defenses and subjected to their environment and their own subconscious I was most interested in and tried to capture in paperworks using pencil, needle and thread to show the dissolve of boundaries and outlines.

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