STATEMENT OF WORK

My practice revolves around painting and experimental music. The subject matter of both stems from everyday observation and the feelings and fantasies that come out of that, the tension between mundane realities and our unconscious histories and yearnings. In my visual work I try to move towards a poetic reductionism, one that I admire in the vignettes of writers such as Lydia Davis or Robert Walser. Sometimes a decrepit leaf or a washed smear of dark green is all it needs.  Sometimes, of course, the washed smear of dark green is the decrepit leaf. 

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Having studied in art schools in Leipzig, Glasgow and Berlin, I have been subjected to a wide range of ideas and ideals about what painting could and should be. During this intense period of research and experimentation, I also deeply immersed myself in art made outside the "professional" art context. To this day, I am facilitating art projects for people living with disabilities and/or mental health issues.

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With this background, two core principles determine my studio practice. The first is to treat each piece as an indiviudal entity and try and boil it down to its expressive core, working as intuitively as possible. This is what I always thought art should be about, and Susanne Langer explains this idea logically and beautifully in her writings about symbolism.

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The second principle is to be aware that contemporary painting by an art school graduate is always a kind of meta-painting. Barry Schwabsky and others have convincingly argued that the style of a modern painter is primarily a way to communicate what kind of a painter they want to be (seen as). With that in mind, I'd like to be considered a painter with range, one that is able to pick and choose from a variety of styles and techniques in order to find what fits the expressive and contextual needs of each individual artwork. In that regard, I sense kinship with the works of artists like Dick Bengtsson, Prunella Clough or Merlin James.

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Concerning what's on the canvas I need to feel an intuitive pull to the "content" of my painting, be it an admired musician I portray or a shade of light blue I feel drawn to in the moment. And whilst the grade of abstraction changes from piece to piece, the complex textures achieved by adding and removing layers of paint create an aesthetic through line in my work. Texture and surface qualities are at the core of my practice, they define the character of each work and they are generally what touches me the most in painting, its tactility. It's something that is closely related to touching and being touched, literally and figuratively, and it's something AI will never be able replace adequately. 

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Roeder just released his artist's book 'On Top of the World yet again' (Freuyd & Verdrusz) and this spring will see full length releases by CD3 (Aguirre) and Primitive Structures (Krim Kram). A collaborative show with Caitlin Merrett King will take place at A_PLACE in Glasgow in July and will be accompanied by a catalogue.