THEMES & VISUAL LANGUAGE

The series does not follow a single linear narrative but moves across several interconnected thematic territories.

The myths and legends of the Black Forest provided recurring motifs — not as illustration, but as vehicles for psychological and emotional content. Local figures and stories became mirrors for the artist’s own experience of being new to a place, of not yet belonging, and of building roots in unfamiliar soil.

The experience of displacement and reconstruction runs throughout. One key work, Icarus Plans, depicts a figure whose aircraft has crashed into the forest — the wreckage visible behind him, new wings of wood taking shape in his hands. It is an image of fall and rebuilding, of making do with what remains. The painting operates simultaneously as myth, self-portrait and quiet manifesto.

Work and labour — the dignity of craft and physical effort — appear across multiple pieces, with figures engaged in traditional and contemporary forms of making. Alongside these, more intimate works explore the experience of finding connection, friendship and love in a new context: the small human anchors that make a foreign place begin to feel like home.

The visual language draws on German Expressionism and Latin American painting traditions — a tension between the two that gives the series its particular character. Figures are rendered with gestural force; colour palettes shift between the dense greens and earth tones of the forest and more vivid, emotionally charged passages. Several works incorporate surrealist and oneiric elements, moving freely between observation and imagination.