Research is the main creative working process of Hendrik Spiess.
Photographs, books, magazines, private albums from second-hand markets and web based archives are the source for his almost mechanical research for graphical material.
Spiess explores the collection of images to unmask any artistic potential and interweaves it with his own inner archive from his decades of experience. Spiess had his „coming of age“ in the 70s and 80s, which significantly influences the topics of his works today.
He creates his motifs from computer-generated, collage-like compositions, which are modified and manipulated in order to give them a new level of meaning.
In almost stage-like and nearly cinematographic scenes consisting of still images, these paintings are staged as an advice of an untold story or storyboard.
Childhood, crime, place and homelessness are discussed in a magical-melancholic and ambivalent mood.
Thus, a visual experience of architecture, situations and different persons arises, which often seems to be dream-like, raptured from our everyday reality.
There is only a narrow path between these stories of an undiscovered mysterious world and our environment today.