To Believe, One Must Have Lost God.

There Was No Special Event That Made Me Decide. I Had Collected Some Photos And The Idea Was In The Back Of My Mind For A Long Time. It Was Growing And Growing, So Finally I Said, 'i Must Paint This.' I Come From East Germany And Am Not A Marxist, So Of Course At The Time I Had No Sympathy For The Ideas, Or For The Ideology That These People Represented. I Couldn't Understand, But I Was Still Impressed. Like Everyone, I Was Touched. It Was An Exceptional Moment For Germany.

I Pursue No Objectives, No Systems, No Tendency; I Have No Program, No Style, No Direction. I Have No Time For Specialized Concerns, Working Themes, Or Variations That Lead To Mastery. I Steer Clear Of Definitions. I Don’t Know What I Want. I Am Inconsistent, Non-committal, Passive; I Like The Indefinite, The Boundless; I Like Continual Uncertainty.

It Was Not Possible For Us To Produce The Same Optimism And The Same Kind Of Humour Or Irony. Actually, It Was Not Irony. Lichtenstein Is Not Ironic But He Does Have A Special Kind Of Humour. That's How I Could Describe It: Humour And Optimism. For Polke And Me, Everything Was More Fragmented. But How It Was Broken Up Is Hard To Describe.

In The Beginning I Tried To Accommodate Everything There That Was Somewhere Between Art And Garbage And That Somehow Seemed Important To Me And A Pity To Throw Away. After A While, Some Sheets In The Atlas Acquired Another Value, After All - That Is, It Seemed To Me That They Could Stand On Their Own Terms, Not Only Under The Protection Of The Atlas.

But It Is Also Untrue That I Have Nothing Specific In Mind. As With My Landscapes: I See Countless Landscapes, Photograph Barely 1 In 100,000, And Paint Barely 1 In 100 Of Those That I Photograph. I Am Therefore Seeking Something Quite Specific; From This I Conclude That I Know What I Want.