What is the aesthetic behind your vision?
Working on a photograph in which I surrounded a human eye with thousands of dried leaves, I was struck by the idea for this project to make a face with leaves, and I wrote it down on my notepad. Researching what had been done along these lines, I quickly came across the work of Giuseppe Arcimboldo. As usual, someone somewhere had already thought about this and had executed the idea magnificently. And with that, I abandoned the project. Alfred de Musset once said, “perfection does not exist.” If it did, improving upon it would be impossible. Thus art, like science, is incremental. Art is pushing the boundaries of our understanding. It’s the act of creating something novel. It’s breaking a world record. It is discovery.
My recombinant portraits are still-life pieces that are primarily concerned with the human condition. The richness of various organic materials and their synergistic combination allow the medium to convey a greater depth of emotion and understanding. At once figurative and abstract, these photographs access the perceptual center of one’s mind, exploiting the way we process what it means to be human and to have emotions. This series brings still-life pieces back to life.
What is your most vivid childhood memory?
I was very young, around five years old, and I had just started reading on my own. My mom had bought me the Chronicles of Narnia, and the books kept me awake way past my bedtime every night. To stop me, my dad unplugged the lamp that I used for reading, thinking I was too young to figure how to plug it back in. That night, when my parents fell asleep, I got up and in the darkness I tried to plug it back in. I grabbed the plug by the pins and I electrocuted myself. I floated away and with great curiosity, I looked down at my still body, dressed in my pajamas, lying next to my bed. But I couldn’t stop floating away and soon my body was too far to be seen. Immediately, I was somewhere else. I was in a great, spacious brightness. A man was holding my hand and all the light was coming from him. I wanted to look at his face, but I couldn’t turn my eyes to see him because it was so painfully bright, so I just looked ahead holding his hand. A moment passed, and then he asked, “Klaus, would you like to come with me?” I understood what was happening and I immediately thought about my mom and how heartbroken she was going to be when she found my lifeless body lying next to my bed. Without getting an opportunity to answer the question that I had been asked, I was back in my body, opening my eyes and breathing. I got up and I got back into my bed.
Tell us about your most vivid dream?
I don’t know if it was a dream, but my most vivid childhood memory feels as real as life itself
