Full transcript : 

Breathe! Sleep! Eat! Play! Dream! This is what art says: Play! Use colour! Sleep! Eat a bread! Make heat! Make a fire! Use your umbrealla! That is art. That are the rules, that are the laws. That are the things. Art never tells you: go voting! Art tells you not to be a in a parliament and be a politician. Art doesn’t tell you to be religious in a church. Art tells you to play around, use this, make this, this, this, new costumes, buy things, use your underwear, look at pornography, play with Adolf Hitler, this is what art tells you all the time. Dear picture, do you like yourself? Are you appropriate for these times or the future? Is it ok that you exist? What do you want? That’s the question.

“If you would have a camera here, while I’m working, it would be like a dance.” I love to be alone in my atelier. I don’t want to communicate then. I just want to be the servant of art. And I want the art to talk with each other and with me maybe if they want to. I love this that you are dancing around doing things, always moving and that the paintings scream to you and tell you: “Do a little bit more red here, do blue here!” Then you listen to music and there is this rhythm of something going on that takes care of you, ja? It’s not a trance, because you are there, you know? doing exactly what is necessary. Here you do a little red, here you do a little green, here you glue maybe the umbrella into that painting. Then you have this haaat. I’m always on duty, you know? I’m doing what art wants me to do. And then I’m dancing around, also screaming, talking with myself, always talking about that art should rule the world, that art is the strongest, and art super and wonderful and great, and how beautyful you are, art, and I am here doing my things for you. I am the ant, the animal for art and doing what is necessary. I am one of the biggest “Verdränger”, like a ship, pushing aside problematic stuff. And maybe there were problems. Also I was of course nerved that I looked with 18 like 14 because I was thrown out of every group. Ja? The people thought, oh, the child is coming, uh, bah bah bah. And so I somehow crept into my chair at home and I was always listening to ABBA and the Beatles, and to Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft always to the same songs, like, 3, 4 hours always the same, ja? and very loud and I went into another world. Into the Gegenworld, into the anti-reality. And so I didn’t do so much. I didn’t go into discos. I was always feeling uncomfortable, not old enough, and, but I was also left alone. I mean, I was not tortured or something because I stepped aside. I was quite hermetic. I was not very communicative. I had an own language with 12, which existed out of ten words and three grimasses, faces. [Q:] Could yo show us maybe? [ughhh] [Q:] What does that mean? It’s somehow saying “Leave me alone!” [ugghh] leave me alone, but in a funny way at that time. [ugghhh] Ja und dann “happa happa happa happa” putting this. And then also communicating with putting my hand under the, under this of the people and “khoy, khoy, khoy, khoy”, ja? and doing some words like “dehe”, “doho”, “noninei”, “boitehe”, “jotedei”, funny words that meant nothing. But that’s when I came with 14, 15, 12, 13, this was my way to say: good-bye. I am …, bye-bye. I will survive in a different way. When I was 22, I was like a 14 year old and I was somehow just doing what my mother said to me what I should do. I was more a dreamer and I was … I did not really know what to do. And on this 22nd birthday day, I went with my mother through Hamburg through town and she asked me: “What do you want for birthday present?” And I thought a little bit and then I said: “I want some paper, and some pencils, and, or pastells and I want to start doing paintings, er, drawings.” And my mother looked at me and said: “Hey, why do you want to do drawings? You never, you were never interested in doing art or ….” Even at that moment we didn’t say “art”. “You were never interested in drawing and we have not so much money and it costs a lot of money, these big papers.” But then she bought this. And from that day on I started to paint, to draw, and to make sculptures. I knew somehow that I’m in duty. I didn’t know the words at that moment, I just, I was happy, I knew what I was doing. I loved what I was doing, I felt needed. And I bought, then I immediately started to buy canvasses. I made sculptures out of “Draht” and very simple stuff. I only knew Picasso at that time and Salvador Dali. And I started to draw like in these “Stierkampf” sceneries, these bullfighting sceneries. And for me Picasso was art. I didn’t know anything more. I stopped doing art in school when I was 16, 17. I was totally average. For me art in school was like chemistry or physics or mathematics. It was totally out of the picture. I was not a good student anyway and not a good, I mean average, I was not really interested in anything. And somehow there, I, it felt easy, and then the process started. And then suddenly people were say to me: “Hey, when you are doing drawings, why don’t you go to this and that museum?” they, “or to the ‘Volkshochschule’? And why don’t you do ‘Aktzeichnen’, drawing naked people?” I said: “Drawing naked people, what? Okay, why not …” Then came these people always telling me something. Like: “Why don’t you, if you are doing this, lithography, why don’t you go to an art school?” I said: “An art school? What is an art school?” And then they told me about this art school in Hamburg. And then they said: “You have to produce a map.” Then I produced a map. And then I was taken – immediately. At that moment there was no struggle. This all happened in one year. I never finished the school, I mean, not with a diploma or something. I just noticed at a certain time in 1995 that you cannot learn art and that you cannot teach art. I mean these five years in art school were very important for me. It was a dark castle building, wonderful. I stayed there overnight. I was always there. I loved it. Many rooms. It as very easy at that time. Everything was dirty. I loved it. The people were really nice. Professors were cool, I really had respect towards my professors even though I think that you cannot be a professor of art, I think this is not possible. I think it doesn’t make sense. Art is the professor. Art doesn’t need a human professor. We had good talks, we had good meals, we had good beer. I also liked some of the artists. Especially my professor, Franz Josef Walter, was super to me, wonderful. We were always talking about wine and food and I was showing him nearly everytime he came my stuff, and he was always laughing. He was so positive, he was alway saying: “Continue, continue, continue, continue” That was all. I was shouting this into the woods and this came back. Exactly what you shout into the woods comes back. If you do what your professor wants you to do then you are dead, you’re finished, you should go home immediately. The mother is always the total authority and we have to be total families in this and you should never be against your mother or your parents. Whatever comes, please take them! I mean, there are constellations that are difficult sometimes, but this is natural friendship, this has to be on the highest possible level. That’s why I don’t like the people from 1968. I don’t like the people from 1968 who were against their parents Even if the parents did bad things, no, you have to find another solution. You cannot be against your parents. Because they are the weak ones. My mother is total authority naturally. There are authorities, but natural ones we need, not ideological authorities. We think we are too important. We have to put ourselves into the “Nahrungskette”, into the nourishing chain And there mymother is standing here [high], always, and I stand here [lower]. I will never be above her, never, never, even if she dies. And she always says: “Jonathan, it’s ok that you have so much pro-no-gra-phy.” which is really strange for her because she is 81 years old, she comes from another generation, and she connects it to money. She says, or succes, she says: “Jonathan, you are so successfull, that’s why you can have it.” Otherwise I would be a pervert for her. I think I’m not a pervert because for me it’s all material. Even if I would be a pervert, it’s also okay as long as it’s in an art. As long as it’s not a reality-pervert. The anti-reality can suck up all perversion. My mother is totally pragmatic. That’s why she comes with this money aspect. She says, not because she’s greedy or something, she says: “It’s good, Jonathan, what you do because you are accepted, the people love you, they pay a lot of money for what you are doing and then we can keep this up and we have a family and, great.” She also likes some paintings, some she doesn’t, she’s also working often her, I make portraits of her, I use her also in sculptures and sometimes we even paint somehow together. I just paint a little and then she says: “Stop it now, finished.” And when an authority like her capacity says finished, then I say ok. My father is too utopian I mean, I met my father many times. He stayed in Japan, he was an Englishman, very handsome, very funny. He was somehow an artist, but he never lived it. He was often in banks, working for banks. And he died 20 years ago. He died when I was 18, 19 and I was too shy to speak to him. I always admired him, looked at him, also visited him in Japan. I was always lying under a table in Japan, I remember I was very sleepy person, I was always sleeping. And when I was sleeping in a bed, and in the morning I just went into the room where he stayed and had breakfast with a hairnet and reading newspaper in a gown like a kimono then I was just slipping into the room under the table It’s heated under the table in Japan often. I was just like sleep-sitting there looking at him. For me he was like Hercule Poirot. Somehow he had this face very oldfashoined face very beautiful and I was too shy to talk with him because he cold only speak Japanese and English and I only spoke German and not very good English And I was so afraid to make a mistake in front of my father that I didn’t talk with him. Whoah, I was paralized. Now I could talk with him. But till he died, I couldn’t talk with him. Not too much. He always gave me presents, the newest stuff from Japan a walkman, things like this. The reality made his life at a certain point quite difficult and not really enjoyable because he was too mixed up trying to be too perfect. The pressure is very high in reality. [Q:] If your father had been alive today, do you think it would have changed the way you live? Maybe I would have been a banker now, ja. [Q:] You think you would have been a good banker? I think so, ja.. Ja, with total passion.