Tell us about yourself.
In my studio with 6 kilns in Berlin I kiln cast, cut, grind and polish my glass work.
I have been working at the interface of design, technology and art for more than 30 years. After completing my studies in mechanical engineering and sculpture at the University of the Arts Berlin, I discovered glass and light in neon works during a stay in New York (1980-81).
After that, I founded several companies in Berlin (www.lichtbau.de, http://www.stratas.de) that deal with the development of light sources and lighting tools for museums: they can be found worldwide in renowned institutions such as embassies (e.g. Turkish Embassy Berlin), public and private buildings (e.g. Ministry of Economics Berlin, Lego House in Veijle, Denmark) and museums (e.g. The State Hermitage, St. Petersburg). The focus was also on luminaires that I developed especially for exhibition spaces, as well as custom-made light sculptures for artists such as Pae White, Mona Hatoum and Olafur Eliasson.
For the past two years, I have been increasingly interested in the interplay of glass and light in sculptural objects. Last year I deepened my knowledge of the production conditions of glass with Zdenek Lhotsky (Czech Republic) and learned how to control long melting and cooling processes in order to give the material different appearances. Since then I have continued to work and experiment with production processes such as kiln casting, grinding and polishing.
What draws you to the material you work with?
I am interested in what happens in glass: how mist-like streaks, air bubbles or colored inclusions can be created, how three-dimensional forms can emerge in the transparent material, and what happens when differently shaped pieces of glass fuse together.
LEDs and filters open up a canon of possibilities for playing with the materiality of glass in interaction with light.
Different angles and interfaces can be used to fan out the light, for example. This creates landscapes and abstract forms in the glass, but also atmospheres outside the glass. The glass body becomes a projector of interior landscapes into the exterior space. The glass body is an ever-changing medium between functional lamp and artistic sculpture.
What themes do you pursue in your work, and why have you chosen the processes that you use in your work?
I want to create objects that people want to live with.