the fight

64 x 38 cm / oil on canvas

red is the colour of love - or, in a painting it quickly gets a sense of horror, of blood and violence. we all learned that in our life, in our visual experience, in newspapers, billboards and television, sometimes even in real life. In my painting -the fight- I´m playing with this experience. in the first moment, it seems to be a horrible image, a press photo of war or a natural catastrophe. It functions a bit in a similar way like the series of headdresses. The headdress-paintings (people saving their heads against the stones) are from civil-war, they look - in the first impression- they could also be from a strange form of carnival, or another - rather fun thing.
-The Fight- works the other way round. It is an image of the Tomato Fight Event in Bunol / Spain, taking place every year. Its a fun event, where people throw tomatoes at each other, but the image manipulates rather in the horror-story-way. This I wanted to support with the painting, making it a roughly painted mess of violence. I think, as this image is quite small, I will repeat this one on a much bigger canvas. I think the paint itself can support the manipulation much better on a large format, but still very roughly and painterly painted.

we´ll see.