I decided to recycle small images destined for the wastebasket, images we discard without giving them the slightest attention. For years, I have been fascinated by packaging material for all kinds of. The more ordinary these packaged products are, the more insistently they refer to their function in the household, to chores around the house. Yet we dispose of the packaging material deemed useless with such abandon as if trying to free ourselves of all the nuisance associated with housework.
Pictograms printed on transparent packing material serve as raw material for my art, and I use them as I would film negatives. Placing these in the enlarger, I generate scaled-up images, complementary colours and inverted tonal values. In other words, recycling takes place on a literal as well as a symbolic plane.
As a result of this working method, a new aesthetic quality emerged as if automatically. When I started the project, this shocked me with the force of discovery. I deliberately left these found images in their original state, without effecting any changes and allowed them to reveal their rich texture. With this radical form of non-intervention, I tried to reach the depths of these images, unveil the secret of pictograms and simultaneously discover a new visual system of values.
Later I was curious to see how the meaning of these drawings shifts under the attentive gaze of an observer; how their meaninglessness is revealed when one tries to use them following printed instructions. Moreover, if we remove them from their original context, their genuine meaning is hopelessly lost. Drawings turned into autonomous pictures and arranged into series assume new meaning and take on a new existence in the context and associations I assign them.
In my latest work I remove pictograms from their original, iconic functions to lend them a role in an open and at times enigmatic story allowing multiple interpretations.