Being There, Exhibition in Public Space, Linz 1996 Excerpt from the Catalog
"I believe that today a religious person, or better yet, a contemplative spirit, can understand my work better than a so-called artist, meaning someone who is trained in formal questions.
Why? The question for most artistically active people seems to me to go wrong, bypassing the essential and heading straight toward the problem: 'How is something made, how is it represented? Are there other, more resonant variants of the representation of the shown?'
In my opinion, this reveals the whole dilemma. One approaches a work from the outside, examining its surface, to penetrate into the interior of the piece (I fear that this often does not succeed even in the slightest).
The mystical person, however, is constantly available to themselves; they observe their own inner mirror and the reflections and refracted lights that the outside world creates upon it. Because they act and exist in their innermost nature, they also encounter the artwork in its innermost essence—the only adequate space corresponding to art.
Thus, this existential level, one could say the level of pure being, does not evoke any thoughts concerned with craftsmanship or formal questions. It is here: 'Who am I – who are you?' Only in a later stage are the forms of appearance addressed. The mystical character allows itself to enter a work of art; it does not shy away from being questioned by an appearance that possibly possesses more presence than itself.
An art and a person of this described kind can only enter into a fruitful exchange that goes beyond a comforting stroking of the retina and the frontal lobes. Only then is the old question touched upon: Who are we, where do we come from, where are we going?"