How did you get into the fine arts? Have you always been interested in art or when was the decisive moment? I am interested in mathematics and have only started in this direction. After that, I studied design, but I lacked a deeper content - philosophical thoughts or analyzes instead of just sticking to the form. For this reason, I then studied fine art at the Düsseldorf Art Academy.

Did you study convolution because of your interest in mathematics?
No, I could just as easily have continued in the natural sciences, but that was always the same for me. In a way you can find a parallel in my way of working, because it's about questioning and analyzing again and again. It doesn't really matter what you think about, but you always think to understand something. That's why my work is also very heterogeneous, because once you understand something, you lose interest and focus directly on the next question.
So is it that you are doing your art primarily for yourself? I think so! My method is similar to that of a scientist. But we are also social beings and of course you want to put that up for discussion or discuss it with others.

So you first understand your question yourself with your art and see how viewers react to it later?
Yes, you just put it up for discussion. Just as I like to look at things from good people. It would also be wrong to say you only do it in your studio, because an exhibition room is also a completely different room and you check whether your own work can withstand this other room. That is also a question of a trial of strength. This doesn't always have to do with size. You can also put a very small thing in a huge hall, which you might overlook at first, but then it has such strength to face this huge hall.

In the opening conference you said that you analyze everything in your environment and think further about the things that you find exciting, and especially those that awaken memories in you. How do you analyze a room? What exactly happens when you notice this shape interests me now?
I don't know if you really relate that to a room. It actually applies to everything. I showed the example with the cups and the vaults with a didactic aspect, because I thought that this would be easier to understand. If you take the handle of the cup, it's just a semicircular shape. If you look at a photo of a cup in which tea has dried, but you don't know, you wonder whether the cup is dirty or what it could be? It doesn't look exactly like a vault, but it has the optics, but it wouldn't have such water edges and the perspective isn't quite right either. That means, it always has to tilt a bit that you think it's a beautiful vault, but something is wrong here. It has to be so that the viewer can somehow decode it without it being too flat. And then I checked that for myself, even with supposed skirts, which are actually domed vaults, just to find out for myself whether it was possible. That's it and then I won't go any further.
I have a daughter. When she was 2 years old, we were at the North Sea and I told her there are jellyfish here that she has to watch out for.

At home in Düsseldorf we drank wine and when my daughter looked into the empty wine bottle, she was startled and said there was a jellyfish in the bottle. Now look into a wine bottle! It has this curved floor below and if you look inside it really looks like that. And that's what I actually do, completely naive or banal, because normally we adults would never see a jellyfish in it, but children do, because they first have to set up the whole system. And that's exactly what I enjoy and that's what I mean - where there's something I think about and then find out for myself.

So do you work on one project until it's done and then start the next one?
Sometimes something like that takes 3 years and then there is a lot of work on it and then at some point you understand it.

To get to the topic of the KM. Are folds also a topic in your work? Why do you find folds so interesting?
I don't even know if I find folds so interesting! I was interested in something else ... If you look at a medieval building now. This has a material effect, because everything was plastered by hand and then an edge will never be 100% straight. The seemingly imprecise gives the whole thing an aura. That's why I started to work with fabric, because I felt it was material, so to speak, in terms of the surface and the imprecise shape. So I started to transform this form into fabric. Today I'm interested
Don't fold at all anymore, I'm interested in how a fold comes about. A fold is actually only something that has been cut off, because a fold is actually created in which two surfaces penetrate each other, if I cut it off then this cut edge is suddenly the fold. At the moment I am interested if you have a very heavily folded part for my sake and now extend the entire surface, you get such a strange structure, which is incredibly chaotic at first. But it is interesting that if you turn it now then there are actually the same rhythms and forms on all sides. Wrinkles were never really the topic of interest for me but first it was based on this architecture and that was then such a random appearance and now I'm just as interested in spatial penetrations and which rhythms result from it.

In your lecture on Monday you showed that you give a smooth and structured surface that goes through folds into the room, through haptics, material purity, illusions or interruptions, warmth and an aura. Did you see folds as a good contrast?
It depends a lot on the material. If you were to make the whole thing out of stainless steel, it would look more like a turbine or a piece of a ship's propulsion system. So for me it's always about an aura and a feel and a sensuality and this sensuality is just too cool for me with such a technical part and boring in its precision.

Do you still do everything by hand today?
Almost everything, actually. I do the work myself afterwards, I rarely have someone who then builds something for me. With some three-dimensional penetrations, millimeters really matter and that's why I work with Rhino.

So do you try out your ideas directly in the computer programs or do you sketch beforehand?
I have ideas in my head, but as it is always like that, such an idea is something vague and then you want to know what it looks like, whether you change an angle, etc., in order to have exciting distances or exciting intersections everywhere and for that Rhino is great.

And then you go out, get the material and make it yourself?
Yes, exactly, then I make my patterns and then construct that.

You run the KM together with Ms. Lossau. What would you like to bring closer to the students?
Free thinking! The possibilities of folding are good and fascinating, but you really shouldn't stop there - experiment and think about the essence!