The reason for this project comes from my childhood, that is clear to me. I did not have any toys. So, I played in the bricks of ruined buildings around me and with which I built houses.
I grew up in a forest. It's like a room. It's protected. Like a cathedral... it is a place between heaven and earth.
I was interested in transcendence from a very early age. I was interested in what was over there, what was behind life. So when I had my first communion I was very disappointed. I had expected something amazing and surprising and spiritual. Instead all I got was a bicycle. That wasn't what I was after at all.
Ruins, for me, are the beginning. With the debris, you can construct new ideas. They are symbols of a beginning.
What does the artist do? He draws connections. He ties the invisible threads between things. He dives into history, be it the history of mankind, the geological history of the Earth or the beginning and end of the manifest cosmos.
When I see a new artist I give myself a lot of time to reflect and decide whether it's art or not.
Life is an illusion. I am held together in the nothingness by art.
But I believe above all that I wanted to build the palace of my memory, because my memory is my only homeland.
If I do something that depresses, it's not because I'm depressed, but because political life and history is depressing.
When, at the end of the 1960s, I became interested in the Nazi era, it was a taboo subject in Germany. No one spoke about it anymore, no more in my house than anywhere else.
Art really is something very difficult. It is difficult to make, and it is sometimes difficult for the viewer to understand. It is difficult to work out what is art and what is not art.
