First in America 2005

First in America – Etchings from the Object Reliefs
16 color etchings on copper, portfolio edition of 24 copies, individual copies each max. 18 copies

America, with all its contradictions—progress and regression, war and peace, economy and life—became a place of intense fascination and empathy for me. As early as the 1980s, I lived and worked in the USA for several years at the invitation of the artists Edward and Nancy Reddin/Kienholz.

During a residency in Los Angeles in 1990/91, I created a series of object reliefs that explored the myth of "Christopher Columbus"—contrasted with my own "discoveries" of America. In a garage on Venice Beach, I created around 22 reliefs and numerous drawings: extractions of social idiosyncrasies, trivial symbols, pop cultural impressions, but also reflections on the repressed history of Native Americans.

These works are intended as a journalistic-artistic observation of America: a reflection of clichés, film socializations of the 1950s, and the harsh realities I experienced in Los Angeles. The first Iraq War ("Desert Storm") overshadowed and abruptly ended my stay – and shaped the underlying mood of the works.

Since 2005, I have been revisiting these themes. In a series of photographs and etchings, the motifs of the reliefs were reworked, updated, and ironically reinterpreted. This resulted in a pictorial reinterpretation of the American myth, which encourages the viewer to reconnect reality and projection, history and cliché, identity and memory.

A special focus is placed on the North American Indians – as a poetic interpretation of a cultural memory that remains marginalized in the present, but whose presence is indispensable for a new understanding of America.

Etchings for FIRST IN AMERICA

AUS SITUATION

WIRD GESCHICHTE

2005

Radierung

H ca. 25 cm

The depiction is based on an episode from Christopher Columbus's first voyage home. After days of incessant storms, he feared the sinking of his ships. In an act of desperation, he wrote down his discoveries, sealed the parchment roll in a lump of wax, locked it in a barrel, and threw the barrel into the sea – in the hope that at least the news might reach Spain. The print shows this barrel, bound in a mechanical device, churned by the stormy waves. Here, the fragile boundary between chance and tradition, between sinking and salvation, becomes visible. We know today: Columbus reached Spain. But the question remains – what would have happened if the sea had swallowed the ships, leaving only the barrel as a silent witness? Would the history of America have taken a different course? The etching addresses this precarious moment in which a situation becomes history – dependent on chance, on the forces of nature, on tradition. History appears not as a fixed entity, but as a fragile construct that could have turned out differently at any time.
DER AMERIKANISCHE

MORGEN

2005

Radierung

H ca. 32 cm

This sheet responds to the American night. Yet even the morning appears not as a new beginning, but as a conflict-ridden turning point in history. In the foreground sits a figure reminiscent of Sitting Bull – a symbol of indigenous resistance. In his hand, he holds a broken bird's feather: a symbol of dignity, but also of rupture, violence, and the violation of cultural and spiritual order. Beside him, a skull in the ground – a memorial to death, displacement, and subjugation. In the background, the white man kneels – the stranger who takes over the land, who takes possession of the soil, water, and air. He embodies the logic of appropriation, which has been transfigured into America's founding myth. A red sky blazes above the scene, the sun burns like a warning sign. A butterfly flutters between the figures – a fragile symbol of change, but also of threatened hope. Thus, the "American morning" becomes a paradoxical image: a new day, permeated from the very beginning by rupture, violence, and contradiction.
AMERIKANISCHE

NACHT

2005

Radierung

H ca. 25 cm

The title refers to a cinematic term: "American Night" describes a technique in which the camera is filmed during the day with a closed shutter to simulate a nighttime scene. It is a staging of night – an illusion that masks the light. In the print, this technique of illusion is connected to the history of America. The figures of indigenous people appear as if lifted from the darkness, simultaneously superimposed by symbolic images: the falcon as a spirit animal, the chief's ornament, the moonlight. But this scenery is not a documentary reality – it is a projection, just as the "American night" in the film is merely a fiction of darkness. The etching thus refers to the construction of "America" itself: a continent whose images and narratives are shaped by projections, attributions, and fictions – from colonial idealization to the romantic idealization of the "Indians." The “American Night” thus reveals a double darkness: that of cinematic illusion and that of the cultural shadow under which indigenous realities have been made invisible.
DER UNBEKANNTE

IN DER MASSE

2005

Radierung

H ca. 25 cm

In the 2005 etching "The Unknown in the Crowd," a portrait of Georg Büchner appears at the top left. His leitmotif, "the unknown in the crowd," refers to the individual human being who is in danger of being lost in the stream of history, yet still possesses an unmistakable individuality. Below unfolds a scene of densely packed, exhausted faces—immigrants who have just survived an attack. The crowd appears like an anonymous collective, a body without a name, in which each individual seems to have been erased. But the enlargement of a single head, combined with Büchner's portrait, draws the gaze back to uniqueness and marks a perspective that eludes the pure collective and asserts the dignity of the individual. Here, the image touches on the essence of colonialism: colonialism transforms the Other into a "crowd," a faceless object of expulsion, migration, and subjugation. He reduces subjects to categories, erases biographies in the name of a higher order, and works with anonymity, with the devaluation of the individual in favor of an administration of people. The etching thus confronts two perspectives: the colonial anonymity visible in the image field of the crowded people, and the Büchnerian memory of the individual, which resists forgetting. In this field of tension between collective and individual, between the violence of the colonial and the stubborn dignity of humankind, a space opens up for the question of how history is told—as a narrative of the masses or as a memory of the individual, distinctive life.
ER FOLGTE

DEN VÖGELN

2005

Radierung

H ca. 25 cm

The print depicts a key scene from the logbook of Christopher Columbus's first voyage: the crew, plagued by doubt and exhaustion, found new hope when they noticed migrating birds flying westward. Columbus interpreted this sign as confirmation of his vision – that they would soon reach land. The etching depicts this movement in a densely interwoven network: a flock of birds presses inexorably to the left, toward the west, reinforced by the lines of a compass rose. The background is overlaid with the colors and symbols of what would later become the American flag – a reference to how this voyage was retrospectively appropriated and mythologized. In the foreground, a parrot stands out, in bright red and blue. It represents the exotic, the foreign, which Europe would soon take possession of and commodify. Between the flock and the flag, a tension arises between observation of nature, colonial desire, and ideological appropriation. “Westward” thus becomes a leitmotif: as a geographical direction, as a symbol for expansion, and as the origin of a global shift that continues to have an impact today.
FIRST IN AMERICA

2005

Radierung

H ca. 30 cm

A face captured in lines and shadows: the chief as a symbol of the first in America. His gaze bears the dignity of a culture that shaped the continent long before Columbus—and at the same time the pain of loss, displacement, and disrespect. The words "First in America" cut into the image like an echo, pointing to the paradox of historiography: those who were there first are now considered a marginal note.
HUNTING SONG

2005

Radierung

H ca. 25 cm

Nine European composers appear in war paint, as if wearing foreign masks. Between them is a Native American hunting song – notes like shouts, like echoes of another cultural space. Music and ritual intertwine, and Western art tradition is reflected in a play of appropriation, irony, and strangeness.
IN THE OCEAN, 2005, Radierung, H ca. 18 cm

A fish and a torpedo, superimposed like mirror images of two evolutions: nature and technology, scaly skin and steel armor. Both glide through the sea, both masterpieces of their construction – but while one sustains life, the other is built for destruction. In this silent juxtaposition, the paradox of human ingenuity is revealed.
MILLION

MELODY

2005

Radierung

H. ca:18 cm

A chorus of birds spreads over the notes of the US national anthem, interspersed with the faces of indigenous people, barely visible, almost swallowed by the feathers. The "million melodies" of nature and indigenous voices do not resonate in the anthem of a state that proclaims freedom—their sounds are erased, drowned out by patriotic self-glorification. A silent protest inscribed in the image.
NAMED CARS

2005

Radierung

H ca. 25 cm

Two levels of names meet in the etching: the chiefs of the indigenous peoples—Spotted Tail, Chevelle, Pontiac—and the gleaming brands of American automobiles. What once signified identity, dignity, and history has degenerated into advertising language and sales arguments in consumerism. The chief appears here as if overlaid with lettering, a shadow behind advertising and fetishization. A commentary on the appropriation that sweeps through the country with every vehicle.
ONE PERCENT

MONUMENT

2005

Radierung

H ca. 25 cm

The Statue of Liberty looks serious, holding not a torch in her raised hand, but an eagle feather—a symbol of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. But this gesture is bitter: only one percent of the US population today are descendants of those who first lived here. A monument that marks not freedom, but disappearance.
SONG FOR

A DEAD FISH

2005

Radierung

H ca. 25 cm

An object found on Wilshire Boulevard—the head of a dead fish—becomes the starting point for a composition. Strings, scales, sea creatures, and musical notation intertwine to create a silent requiem. The dead fish no longer sings, but the image translates its silence into music: a song of transience, a score for the silencing.
THE

BACKSIDE

OF

THE FLAG

2005

Radierung

H ca. 18 cm

Behind the Stars and Stripes, another face peeks out—that of those who have been erased from American history. The red stripes of the flag lie like wounds across the face of an indigenous man. The front and back of the symbol contradict each other: freedom for some, oblivion for others.
THE OUTLAWS

2005

Radierung

H ca. 25 cm

A gallery of pistols—each named after a legendary figure of the Old West. Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Calamity Jane: romanticized icons of violence. The etching reveals how deeply the myth of the outlaws is inscribed in America's memory—heroes and criminals at once, immortalized not by their faces, but by the silhouette of the weapon.
WAITING FOR

THE BROOD

2005

Radierung

H ca. 25 cm

Eggs lie in the darkness, fragile promises of a future. Between them are the names of the tribes: Cherokee, Apache, Sioux, Crow. Each name like a heartbeat, each dot on the shell a sign of perseverance. The etching captures the hope that new life will emerge from the fragile silence—and that the tribes will continue to breathe.
THE

SNAKE

2005

Etching

H ca:

17 cm

The Snake (2005), an etching approximately 17 cm high, was created after the relief Camouflage, which was created in the shadow of the Iraq War during the artist's stay in America. The snake entwines itself around the earth – an ancient symbol of temptation, destruction, and cyclical recurrence. Yet here it is not mythologically neutral, but politically charged: in its mouth is a key, as if forcing access to the world; on the horizon flutters a dollar bill – Benjamin Franklin as an icon of the global power economy. The war against Iraq transformed not just a region, but the entire world order. It revealed the deadly alliance of economic greed, geopolitical calculation, and mythical exaggeration that entwines everything like a serpent's body. In the combination of cosmos, earth, animal, and banknote, the etching becomes an iconic allegory of the 21st century: the world held hostage by an unleashed power that is devouring itself.

Link zu den Reliefs FIRST IN AMERICA

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