"I'm living very isolated outside of a small village - it is,

maybe, like on an island - isolated from people, from

society, but also from art and artists. For me it is very

important to be independent and to be forced to do my

own things. I try to protect myself from the normal

thinking of society, for instance of German society. The

monks in the Middle Ages living in monasteries or as

hermits in remote places, or in other parts of the world

hermits and ascetics living in forests or caves in the

mountains, they did this even much more extremely, but

with the same intention. The trees and forests, the rocks

and hills which surround me, they are so timeless, so

independent and still so new every day."

"I collect the pollen in these meadows that surround my studio, in

the forest nearby - all very close. It begins in mid-February with

the blossoming of hazelnuts up till August, September. I use my

fingers to brush the pollen from the flowers into a jar. It is very simple

and with dandelion, for instance, which blossoms in June for about a

month I get two big jars. Pines have so much pollen days with a lot of

sun and I collect much pollen, and there are cool days, windy days,

when I collect very little....After all these months I then have four,

five or six jars of three or four different kinds of pollen."

"Milk, pollen - a liquid, a powder - so ephemeral and yet so dense.

Milk on stone, it is so still, so incredibly still. It seems like it can last for

ever...and it lasts only for a few hours. It has the high concentration,

this density, because it lasts such a short time."

"They the Rice Houses have the form of a house and also of reliquary of

the Middle Ages or of a Muslim tomb. which contain the bones of Saints.

And these rice houses now contain food - maybe that is even the same,

I think so. But still it is neither an altar nor a reliquary, it is much more

complex."

"I was facinated with what pollen is in itself. Pollen has incredible colours,

which you never could paint, but it is not a pigment and its colour is only one

quality out of many, like a hand has a colour, or blood is red but it is not a

red liquid, and milk is white, but it is not a white liquid. It is the difference

between a blue pigment and the sky."

"Milk or pollen are extremely beautiful - like the sun or the sky. And why be

afraid of beauty? Recently so many artists, especially German artist, seem to

think it has to be as ugly and as brutal as possible. Beauty is bourgeois

what a strange idea. I tried to participate in beautiful things...and this is

my great fortune."