Lightness that weighs heavy – and heaviness that floats. In “Heavy is Helium,” we encounter figures who seem to have stepped out of another reality: their bodies are made of shimmering, inflatable material, their faces anonymous, almost childlike, yet strangely distant. Drifting between pop art, digital fantasy, and surreal dreamscapes, they move through artificial, intensely colored worlds – sometimes riding an oversized swan, sometimes standing as vibrant sentinels at the edge of the sky, sometimes shimmering by the sea. What appears playful and light at first glance is, in truth, born from a time of inner heaviness. The motifs of this series are based on photographs I collected during a dark period overshadowed by depression – small islands of light I kept like treasures in a folder of favorites. Working on this series became a way for me to preserve the positive energy of these images and share it with the world – without exposing their intimacy. The glossy shells and masks are both protection and invitation – they guard what is hidden, yet still let the light shine through. “Heavy is Helium” invites us to reflect on the masks and shells we put on or have shed – and to ask whether our familiar sense of lightness is even possible in this complex world, without it becoming a burden.

Born in 1975 in Heidelberg, a city rich in possibilities, yet one that confines by twenty. For over twenty-five years, I have shaped experiences as a strategist and designer – from the automotive industry and complex industrial applications to the cultural sphere. My deepest impulse has always been to pierce the veil of the purely functional, to unveil the essence – the soul – of undertakings, and thus to translate technology into a language that truly reaches people. An interlude: West Africa. Much dust, much light, much life – from Liberia through Sierra Leone to the Côte d’Ivoire, alongside my wife, who is always just quickly saving the world. Today, I commute between Pretoria and Berlin, a constant traveler between spheres. My art and my writings usually emerge when life becomes too heavy, or too light, to be left unaddressed. I collect fragments, masks, small escapes – and believe that what we conceal is sometimes the truest part of us. Many of my motifs are born from days when I would have preferred to hide. Instead, I gathered them, reassembled them, and imbued them with luster, irony, and color. My figures? They navigate the space between self-protection and openness, fragment and whole – and pose the question of how to keep one's sense of humor in a contradictory world. For me, art is not a destination, but a realm of possibility. A place where I translate the unfinished, the askew, the iridescent into images, texts, or collages. After a quarter-century in digital storytelling, now, on the cusp of fifty, I am venturing into the open: I am showing my own work. Incomplete, contradictory, sometimes offbeat – but always with the attempt to give a face to the inexplicable. And if that doesn't succeed, there's always a shrug.