Sunflowers

People turn towards power like sunflowers turn to the sun.

In "Propaganda", Edward Bernays describes how public relations stabilize modern democracies. In his view, manipulation and fake news are not immoral per se, but legitimate means to maintain stability within the democratic system thus preventing chaos. Society has evolved since his book was published in 1928, especially since the digital democratisation of the information process through the WWW, but Bernay's core messages are still valid.

‘Sonnenblumen – Sunflowers’ is a series of paintings jam packed with quotes of 20th century American art, in particular Pop Art and Abstract Expressionism that deals with the question of how much fact our society needs and how much fake news it can withstand. Quoting an art style that nowadays is disrespectfully referred to as ‘surface-treatment-painting’ by some, the style of the ‘never-again-war’ generation, is necessary from the painter’s perspective in order to deep dive into that generation's mindset. Apparently, all hope was set on scientific progress, which would ultimately enable society to live in peace, prosperously and in harmony. In retrospect, this prediction makes sense, but the present shows they were wrong on more than one level. We are now in a technology-driven age, but experiencing a relapse socially away from liberal, democratic systems towards stable but restrictive autocracies, dictatorships and - who would have thought it - back to monarchy.

The Sunflowers project takes a playful, painterly approach to this process. What do we see? And what do we REALLY see?