hut
Acryl auf Papier
23 x 32 cm
2002
23 x 32 cm
2002
„REINVENTING THE WORLD“
C.C.Voss talks to T.H.Dahmen
C.C. Voss: What gives you the impulse for your work?
T.H.Dahmen: Drawing or painting I have to reinvent the world every day.
C.C.V.: A big project indeed. How do you manage that?
T.H.D.: Initially I do not intend anything at all. Emptiness and close attention should prevail in my mind. Only then my hand starts working in a sleepwalking way and the images appear. What is formed depends on the moment of the creative act. A mixture of representational and abstract way of composing. The point is to let happen as much as possible and to censor as little as possible.
C.C.V.: Which questions arise during this process?
T.H.D.: The first challenge is finding the form. It puzzles me again and again: The form I found is the solution. I have the answer, but what was the question? With each view into the world that does not point towards an aim, new questions arise.
C.C.V.: Isn't there a risk to repeat yourself?
T.H.D.: Every new day gives me the opportunity not to repeat what I have done before. I have to do it nevertheless. Continuity is repetition plus stepping forward. Only the repetition of steps makes walking possible. At the end of each day there is a pile of drawings. Next day I have to decide whether to accept it or work over it again.
C.C.V.: Work over it? Does it mean something gets undone?
T.H.D.: One cannot undo anything on a piece of paper. What happened remains hidden for the viewers, but the layers, i.e. the history, tell them that underneath something is actually still there.
C.C.V.: So the hidden parts are lost forever...
T.H.D.: Yes, forms are buried beneath new layers of forms, as the days of our lives are buried beneath the weeks and the weeks in turn beneath...
C.C.V.: Will these works become insignificant to you some day ?
T.H.D.: I don't know. Perhaps some day I really don't need them anymore. But just now they accumulate, disappear in boxes, piles, shelves. They are short statements about the past days, weeks, years.
C.C.V.: That means you still need them around? What for?
T.H.D.: My works are batteries from which I can tap energy again. Or like fertile ground: a drawing has roots. It must grow. The fruit often ripens only after a long period of contemplation.
C.C.V.: In many of your works texts are stamped in. Where do they come from?
T.H.D.: The texts originate in another level of the working process. I find them occasionally, in newspapers, on the radio, in my memory. They connect the work with the intellectual world that exists inside and outside every individual, the "nutrition fluid", as Musil put it. We constantly quote. The working process is accompanied by mental activity which is rather a buzzing around than a reflection upon a piece of work after it has been finished. Words can fall out of this "mental gossip" or "buzzing of thoughts" and become an element of a drawing. Their meaning might squeeze into the foreground and fence off the access to images. They lead the viewers and they might lead them astray. That's the way it is with verbal concepts.
C.C.V.: And what is your concept?
T.H.D.: There is no concept, no idea, the origin remains in the dark. John Cage said: "All I know is that I have to go on."
C.C.V.: Nothing to hold on to?
T.H.D.: Regarding the trace I leave behind when I step on. It is the only reliable line.
T.H.Dahmen: Drawing or painting I have to reinvent the world every day.
C.C.V.: A big project indeed. How do you manage that?
T.H.D.: Initially I do not intend anything at all. Emptiness and close attention should prevail in my mind. Only then my hand starts working in a sleepwalking way and the images appear. What is formed depends on the moment of the creative act. A mixture of representational and abstract way of composing. The point is to let happen as much as possible and to censor as little as possible.
C.C.V.: Which questions arise during this process?
T.H.D.: The first challenge is finding the form. It puzzles me again and again: The form I found is the solution. I have the answer, but what was the question? With each view into the world that does not point towards an aim, new questions arise.
C.C.V.: Isn't there a risk to repeat yourself?
T.H.D.: Every new day gives me the opportunity not to repeat what I have done before. I have to do it nevertheless. Continuity is repetition plus stepping forward. Only the repetition of steps makes walking possible. At the end of each day there is a pile of drawings. Next day I have to decide whether to accept it or work over it again.
C.C.V.: Work over it? Does it mean something gets undone?
T.H.D.: One cannot undo anything on a piece of paper. What happened remains hidden for the viewers, but the layers, i.e. the history, tell them that underneath something is actually still there.
C.C.V.: So the hidden parts are lost forever...
T.H.D.: Yes, forms are buried beneath new layers of forms, as the days of our lives are buried beneath the weeks and the weeks in turn beneath...
C.C.V.: Will these works become insignificant to you some day ?
T.H.D.: I don't know. Perhaps some day I really don't need them anymore. But just now they accumulate, disappear in boxes, piles, shelves. They are short statements about the past days, weeks, years.
C.C.V.: That means you still need them around? What for?
T.H.D.: My works are batteries from which I can tap energy again. Or like fertile ground: a drawing has roots. It must grow. The fruit often ripens only after a long period of contemplation.
C.C.V.: In many of your works texts are stamped in. Where do they come from?
T.H.D.: The texts originate in another level of the working process. I find them occasionally, in newspapers, on the radio, in my memory. They connect the work with the intellectual world that exists inside and outside every individual, the "nutrition fluid", as Musil put it. We constantly quote. The working process is accompanied by mental activity which is rather a buzzing around than a reflection upon a piece of work after it has been finished. Words can fall out of this "mental gossip" or "buzzing of thoughts" and become an element of a drawing. Their meaning might squeeze into the foreground and fence off the access to images. They lead the viewers and they might lead them astray. That's the way it is with verbal concepts.
C.C.V.: And what is your concept?
T.H.D.: There is no concept, no idea, the origin remains in the dark. John Cage said: "All I know is that I have to go on."
C.C.V.: Nothing to hold on to?
T.H.D.: Regarding the trace I leave behind when I step on. It is the only reliable line.
cloud
acrylic on paper
24 x 29,5 cm
2002
24 x 29,5 cm
2002
flag
acrylic on paper
23 x 28 cm
2002
23 x 28 cm
2002
new shapes for Ireland
acrylic/pencil on paper
17 x 24 cm
2002
17 x 24 cm
2002
creator's game
acrylic on paper
27 x 21 cm
1999
27 x 21 cm
1999
hour-glass
acrylic on cardboard
20,5 x 29,7 cm
1995
20,5 x 29,7 cm
1995
Double-tapped
acrylic on paper
25 x 35 cm
1999
25 x 35 cm
1999
get nowhere
acrylic on paper
21 x 29,7 cm
1995
21 x 29,7 cm
1995
right/wrong
acrylic on paper
20,5 x 29,7 cm
1994
20,5 x 29,7 cm
1994
view back
acrylic on paper
20,5 x 29,7 cm
1994
20,5 x 29,7 cm
1994
Download catalogue
„black and white diary"
(pdf 1,5 MB)
(pdf 1,5 MB)