The Alchemy Garden of Joy in the Lafayette Shopping Centre On the surface you can see fleeting images, instant photos. They involve the transformation of photos shot from the hip in the Berlin Shopping Centre “Lafayette” into paintings.
Optical Phenomenon, the movement of photographed people, the effect and colourfulness of artificial light, but above all the attraction to me of this painting out of all the others is the content of the artistic process.
In the second stage of the development of this piece of work I went under the surface of the painting: the mortising machine sank a 1 cm marking into the wood base of the painting. This engraving was then gold plated. The engraving originates out of alchemy Allegories taken from the book „Das Chymische Lustgärtlein“, by Daniel Stolcius von Stolcenberg, which was published in Frankfurt, 1624.
The actual meaning of the processes described in the allegories, are unknown to us as the secrets of Alchemy were often passed on only by word of mouth. However, the meaning of these processes is not what I attempted to discover in these paintings. I was interested in the process in which a correspondence developed between the old mysterious and to me somehow apparently meaningful drawings and Painting.
What does a three headed dragon in a flame covered chemical piston have to do with Stockings, and the Unicorn which springs out of the roses with the unknown woman? I rely on the observer to discover the possible answer with their intuition.
Joseas R. Helmes, Easter 2002
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