Paintings; Details

  

Autopilot Regression

Excessive thoughts

though just ineffective

Cause always the same

Without sense and aim

Therefore no resolving

Metamorphosis repeating

In circles revolving

Ever searching for meaning

Without a connection

To outer occasions

Neglecting key questions

Autopilot regression

Self-inflicted ego

Twixt micro and macro

Constant antagonism

Between foolery and reason.

✝ Pious Edifice ✝

This peculiar house caught my eye when I saw some workers on the street carrying out its furniture. They allowed me to have a snoop around, so I took these pictures to capture some of the oddly absorbing atmosphere.
The residents were two older sisters who had just moved to a nursing home. Since the early 1950s, the unmarried and childless siblings had lived in the house in a very solitary and isolated way, and it appeared as if they had never changed a bit of their very own time capsule. Now that they were too old to look after themselves, they had to leave behind almost all of their personal belongings like clothes, books, or their vast selection of wooden crosses. The sisters knew only too well that the physical world was not more but a deceitful one, and had thus chosen the spiritual life with devotion: their faithfulness could not only be witnessed by the many bibles in the bookshelves, but especially by the rare and massive crosses hanging from the walls of about every single bedroom in the three storage house.

The merciful sisters have surely saved their places in heaven. For me, however, this place was rather reminiscent of a setting for a David Lynch movie, albeit a very pious one. Blessed be them sisters!

Welcome Home

A bedroom with a sink keeps away the stink.

The red telephone: always in-line with the divine.

 The Sisters.

 Ah, hello There!

A perfect chiaroscuro - I bet Caravaggio would have loved it!

Naptime.

Painterly colour schemes...

 ...and radiating drapery

Beelitz-Sanatoriums

The Beelitz-Sanatoriums were built in three phases between 1898 and 1930 in Potsdam, nearby Berlin. They consist of more than 60 building complexes that served as hospitals for patients with tuberculosis and as psychiatric wards. During WWI and WWII, the buildings were mainly used as sickbays for casualties. In 1916, one of the wounded soldiers staying as an in-patient for two months was Adolf Hitler. After WWII, like most parts of eastern Germany, Potsdam was occupied by the Red Army. Up until 1994 the Soviets utilized the buildings as the biggest military hospital outside of the UDSSR.

The edifices might have been abandoned by the end of the cold war, but they still radiate vividly and invite the viewer for a time travel beyond compare. The picturesque scenery has not only captivated many photographers, but it has also inspired directors like Wolfgang Becker or Roman Polanski, who filmed The Piano  at this very spot.
I sneaked through one of the fences in order to capture some of the spectacular atmosphere. The focus lies in the contrapositions of light and darkness, the inside and the outside, as well as on the natural vs. the cultivated; Broken windows that let in the diffused light, layers of paint crumbling down and cracking up an undeniable past, and nature reclaiming back what has once been its own realm creates a unique ambience in which one can almost touch the time pass by.